Helix
by Little Tanuki
Summary: Firewall AU: Sequel / follow up to "Thicker than Water". Time is running out, and Bashir is left with one last option. To save himself, he must come full circle to the place where his adventure began.
1. For Jules

**Note: The following story (or most of it, anyhow) takes place immediately after the events of the AU story **_**Thicker Than Water**_**, roughly parallel to DS9 sixth season episode, **_**Statistical Probabilities**_**.**

**Disclaimer: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine belongs to a gang of Ferengi privateers from somewhere in the vicinity of Beta Cruxis. Or possibly to Paramount. In either case, I am not one of those people, and whatever Latinum I could ever have received from this comes only in my dreams.**

* * *

"_**Men love their children, both the better off and those of no account; for some have wealth, and others have it not, but all the race has love for children**_**."**

**(Euripides, **_**Heracles**_**.)**

"_**One thing, however, I am very sure of, and that is, that if all mankind agreed to meet, and everyone brought his own faults along with him for the purpose of exchanging them for somebody else's, there is not one man who, after taking a good look at his neighbour's faults, would not be only too happy to return home with his own**_**."**

**(Herodotus, **_**Histories**_**, VII.152.)**

* * *

_Something about a choice, once made_…

It was not a feeling that Richard Bashir could easily define. Not something that he could take from himself and hold up to the light, to examine like a brightly coloured, delicate specimen. It was so nearly out of his reach, almost too far even to retrace the story of how it had come to be.

All that he sensed - at first - was the tiniest seed of an idea, tickling the edges of his mind as though it were a sliver of gravel in his shoes. And, as days passed, the seed grew, unfurled, and sprouted into a complex but noticeable form. Unspoken thoughts wrestled angrily inside him, coming together like the solid dark clouds of a storm on the horizon.

_A quick fix_, some people had said. An easy solution - a cheat. But now, at last, the storm had abated. A choice, once made was all that it had taken to part those clouds, just enough to let in the merest glimpse of light.

For some reason, Richard found himself drawn away from his side of the bed, where three unrewarded hours spent in his search for sleep had seemed like half a night. As her husband wrapped himself in a loose, knee-length robe, Amsha stirred only slightly at his absence. And just as quietly, Richard tucked both feet into a pair of oak-brown slippers and paused to smooth the covers again over her shoulders.

Across the hall, a narrow blue door - with the shadows of straight edged, parallel indents around it - marked the sleeping quarters of his and Amsha's only son. The father entered secretly, cautiously, to position himself at the young boy's side - and settled without a sound, taking care not to wake his sleeping child.

Julian was smiling - eyes shifting quietly from side to side, long, dark lashes fanning out across the upper edge of his cheeks. The child's face was calm, even as he squirmed in his sleep, and as his fingers curled around the ears of his caramel-brown teddy bear. Richard lifted a corner of the bed sheets and smiled down at the face of his child. No doubt his dreams would be filled with the promise of adventure among the farthest stars.

"None of us is ever the same from one day to the next," his contact had assured him, in a steady, even timbre to match the calm of her eyes. "We learn. We grow. And the minds of children are particularly adaptable. Your son is at the ideal age, but this will become more difficult, the older he gets. If we are to go ahead with this procedure, it is best that you make your decision quickly. I promise the boy you take home will still be yours. Improved, certainly. But in every essential aspect, he will not be any less your son. If all goes well, he should only have the dimmest memory of ever having been any different."

No need to explain to the boy why they would be taking this long journey. The intricate reasoning behind their decision would probably only confuse him even more. Just tell him what he already believed. This would be a brilliant adventure, reaching further than they had ever been beyond the safe confines of Earth. Even his dreams would scarcely compare to the amazing sights that they would find along the way.

* * *

"We've spoken about this." Richard placed an arm around Amsha's shoulders. His words had come softly, but with as much determination as he knew how to muster. They sat together beneath a broad, verdant tree at the edge of their favourite public garden - with the same view they had gazed upon, when deciding that the time had come to raise a family. The Sun shone down with a warm, golden light - its rays wavering through the leaves above like the reflections from the surface of a rippling pond.

There would be other benches for them to sit, Richard reminded himself. Other neighbours at their next new home. Other parks, other streets, other favourite destinations…

Summer was particularly bright that year, giving them an early afternoon glow - but only enough to keep each day just comfortably warm. And Richard waited, glancing at the profile of his wife, seeing her look down so that the gleaming black of her hair concealed all but a fraction of her face. Her rueful gaze turned straight ahead. But she offered no indication of paying any heed to the panorama before her.

Even the sight of her own child straddled over a long, plastic tunnel - attached at both ends to a complicated climbing frame - had not distracted Amsha Bashir from the uncertainty gathering like a mist across her eyes. "You know it's for the best," continued Richard. "We're giving him a chance. That's all."

"Richard-" Again, Amsha's dark eyes pleaded, sparkling with reflected light across their surface. Her sweetly exotic voice was even softer than it had been throughout the day. "I wish I could be as sure as you are."

Richard took her hand in his, clasping it lightly so that their fingers intertwined. With his free arm wrapped securely around the top of her shoulders, he drew her close until he felt the soft touch of hair against his cheek. It was the closest to comfort that he knew how to give - or even to find. The task fell to him, to mask his own persistent doubts, to convince his family that this was really the best choice they could have made. To Amsha, to his son, he had already vowed never to show them any uncertainty.

"It's for Jules," he reminded her, and stroked the back of her hand with a single thumb. He felt the gentle pressure of her weight against his chest, as she leant back with a slow and heavy sigh. Her face was shielded from view, but her whispered response was quiet and mournful.

"I know."

Two other boys had come to the park. Both were naturally thin, like Richard's son - but older and taller. One of them was freckled, the other with hair the colour of powdered rust. Quick to lose interest in the younger boy, the pair soon turned and scampered away towards the surrounding trees. Julian stared forlornly after them, still straddling the tunnel of the climbing frame. His hands were raised and clasped together to safeguard the collection of treasures that he and his vanished companions had gathered from the leaf litter below.

His attention soon shifted to the shady bench, where his parents sat and watched him in return. He squinted, thoughtful, focused, and somewhat distracted by his mother and father's distant exchange. A frown had creased the skin of his brow, giving a touch of quiet confusion to the shadows falling across his eyes.

Seeing the pensive expression on the face of his six year old son, Richard set his jaw, and paused to add a silent reminder of his own.

_For Jules._


	2. A Friendly Hand

Three figures stood beneath a the gleam of an overhead lamp. Thick, dark leaves waved and rocked above them, from the long, sharp branches tapping against this single source of light. Its shadow obscured their gathered faces.

"Do you have it?" asked one - tall, lean, and almost invisibly dark.

"Everything you asked for, and more." The smallest member of their trio snapped to attention, pausing for a mock salute. "_Sir_."

The first speaker's response was whip-quick, consonants sharp like the crack and hiss of overcooked butter. "This is serious, you moron. Wipe that smirk off your face before I wipe it off for you."

"All _right_. Fine. No problem."

"Now. You _did _manage to us transport - right?"

After only a moment, a steady glow was emanating from the screen of a padd in the small one's hand. He passed it to the other men, paused long enough for both of them to conduct a summary study of its contents, and tucked it quickly back into the folds of his coat. "Ulix says to meet him by midday tomorrow, but he added that he'll be leaving at exactly that time, whether the three of us are on board or not."

"Did he give you any trouble?"

A shake of the small man's head was accompanied by a not quite indifferent shrug - which could just as easily have been mistaken for a movement of the shadows above. "I always thought Ferengi were more interested in Latinum than they've ever been in asking questions."

"Right, then. Let's be sure it stays that way."

"He… uh… He did ask for payment in advance…"

The tall one stiffened. "I trust you told him that's out of the question."

"Course I did." The shorter man glanced over his shoulder, as though convinced that every shadow hid multiple pairs of silent, staring eyes. "There was one more thing I wanted to ask…" he ventured - and coughed, hesitating.

"Go on," his companion prompted.

"It's just, with all this fancy planning and all… How do we know there's going to _be _a job once we get there? I mean, let's say for argument's sake that this guy was telling the truth. You'd think he would at least…"

"Trust me," interrupted the first speaker, forgetting for a moment how his voice at full volume could fill the still, moist air of midnight. "We aren't in a position from which we would ever want to say no. If our friend says there's a job for us to do, then wherever he's sending us is exactly where it'll be."

* * *

Stretched upon the surface of a long, sloping bench, muscles tense along the length of his arms, another man winced and clenched his teeth with a sharp inward hiss. The tension had sent a powerful ache all the way through his neck and into the lower part of his skull. He pressed both arms down hard against the mattress, using all his strength and will to keep them flat at his side - and to fight a compulsion to knock away the looming form of the high frequency diagnostic scanner.

Wire-thin beams of orange-yellow - spreading outwards from a central point above - brought a shallow, tingling sensation to the tips of his fingers. _It's only an illusion_, he reminded himself. Nothing was really closing in around him, or riding that visible glow as it crept in a slow dance up and down the length of his body.

_Just a little longer_. He closed his eyes, but imagined no less that the overhead scanner was falling towards him. It wouldn't last. As long as his calculations were correct, he only had a few more minutes, to calm the pressure of his thundering heart - and resist the heated rush of blood beneath his skin.

_They'll tell you when it's time to get up_.

"Don't be nervous, Julian." The voice of a woman came from the darkness above him. His mind brought forth a detailed image of her perfect cheekbones and smooth, milk-white face - in the seconds before he opened his eyes to peer upward at the sight of her smile.

"You're not the one on the table," he tried to joke, painfully conscious of how small and thin his voice had sounded.

"All right." Dax's voice broke through his fearful musings. "I suppose not. But nothing will go wrong. This won't last forever, and we're here with you - you know that."

Seeing the Trill woman's subtle amusement, feeling the pressure of her hand around his wrist, Bashir nodded sheepishly - but kept his focus on the broad, close forms of the machinery above. He was holding back an urge to escape, struggling to ignore a soaring, giddy sense of vertigo. Every breath he took was shallower than it was comforting, passing too quickly and unevenly - far too _visibly _- in and out through his nose.

_This is ridiculous_. He scowled in self reproach at the sheen of cold sweat that had spread across the surface of his skin, and the mild itch as it trickled wetly from his brow to his temples. _Pull yourself together, man_.

Nodding quietly, Bashir curled his fingers as securely as he could around the corners of a slender green treasure that was nestled within the creases of his right hand palm. An isolinear chip, the size of a Human fingertip, but with information as precious to him as Latinum to a Ferengi. He managed with some effort to reciprocate Dax's reassuring smile.

Eyes closed, he allowed each thought to follow its own particular course. There was something he had said to Jadzia. A conversation, a confession - it might have even been a prediction. But the moment of release had only heightened his deadline, bringing every barrier closer and turning them to something evident, and palpable.

"There," said a voice from a distant corner of the room. "We're done."

With a descending hum at the very edge of Bashir's hearing, the light faded gradually until it was entirely dim. He paused for a long, slow breath, to gather his will before convincing himself that the time had come to lever himself back into a sitting position. Dax's hand was around his opposite shoulder, ready to catch him if needed. Together, they waited for his balance to equalise.

The unseen speaker was quick to come into view, lab coat swaying at the hem as she lifted a hand to scratch the top of her long, dark hair. Pinned high on her head into a slightly uneven whorl-shaped bun, it was escaping at several points and drifted in a cloud around the edges of her face.

Another strand was loosened from its bonds at the moment when she took her hand away. The greyish green hue of her eyes, set against the brown of her face and the chestnut tones of her hair, strengthened the woman's resemblance to a quietly attentive domestic cat. She located her visitors as she approached, and regarded them coolly, her expression turning moderately grim. "Why did you take so long to tell someone what was happening to you?" she asked.

Bashir looked away, but without much hope of hiding his brief discomfort. "I don't know."

"You must have a theory."

_Several, actually_, thought Julian. He had been distracted, tripped up by too many sudden, unsought obstacles. He'd lost all faith that his actions could make a bit of difference. Or perhaps he had just been far too tired.

This woman was an expert in her field. He should have known better than to expect that she would accept his claims of ignorance.

"Did you find anything?" he asked instead.

The woman's probing gaze lingered a moment, binding him as inescapably as any restraining field. But finally she relented, briefly closing her eyes with a sigh and a shake of her head.

"Nothing concrete," she began. "I've sent away for your medical history, and for any other records that Starfleet might have access to. But I have to confess that none of what they've given me has proven very helpful. At least, not _yet_. Most of your personal files from before the age of seven were destroyed. That was what your mother said the last time we spoke. It's not so unusual in cases like yours, but it does make our next course a little more difficult to determine."

"You…" Alarm surged through him, stripping his voice to the barest whisper. Even the sound of his own speech was startling. "You brought my parents into this? Athena - I can't believe you would…"

Athena Nikos stopped to settle into a seat nearby. Another strand of hair had escaped from its bonds, and her wide-set green eyes gave little clue as to the thoughts behind them. "Perhaps it's not my place to say. But wouldn't it have been better to include them from the start?" She sighed tiredly, sounding resigned. "In any case, there's still a chance we might get something useful, once we hear from our contacts on Adigeon Prime."

Julian tensed, quick to follow the conversation onto safer ground. "Has there been any word?"

"Not yet." Seeing the flash of anxious impatience behind Bashir's own eyes, Doctor Nikos hastened to reassure him. "But that doesn't mean we have to give up. It's only been a day, and even subspace messages can take a long time to reach beyond some Federation borders."

"Then perhaps I should…" He stopped. How many times had he tried to speak this thought, only to be held back by his own conflicting doubts? Even now, he was no longer sure. "There has to be another option. Even if I have to go there in person, I really ought to be doing something."

"That's not a good idea," insisted Nikos, "You're safer here than if you attempted to travel though open space. If anything does happen, you don't want to find yourself light years away from Federation territory with no-one around to answer your call. If you stay here, then at least help will be at close at hand if you should need it."

Nikos' wide, scrutinising eyes continued to stare as Julian released his hold on the examination table. His fingers had created tiny radiating grooves upon its surface. Maintaining his focus, he was able to conceal the visible weakness in his limbs. But he still felt every minute tremor as his strength and self control continued to abandon him. And shame was quick to take the place of impatience and anger.

"Please, Athena." He spoke softly. "I can't just stay here and… There has to be _something_…"

She sighed, glancing once at Dax before returning her attention to Bashir. "All right. What if I promise to give it some thought?"

Nodding reluctantly, Bashir slipped down a little to make standing contact with the floor, and steadied himself against the nearby bench. He stepped away, gathering his jacket from one of the surrounding tables - turning his face away from both of his companions. His voice was hoarse, as trapped beneath his chest as he, somehow, had allowed himself to be within this room. "So. We wait."


	3. The Path of Least Resistance

_The tall, smoothly confident Lieutenant Commander Dax had refused to allow her friend to leave the station unaccompanied. "I still have some outstanding leave," she'd insisted with all the unyielding tenacity she could inject into her voice._

"_In the middle of a war?" asked Julian, still doubtful._

_But Dax was resolute. "I'm coming with you," was the closest she came to an answer. "I've already confirmed with Benjamin that he's willing to spare us a runabout. And _that _is my final word on the subject."_

_The _Rubicon _levitated from its launching pad and drifted smoothly into the realm of open space. Bashir cast a parting glance over his shoulder, wishing that he could have at least caught a glimpse of the edges of the outer docking ring. The runabout's viewing ports faced forward, not back. He had lost his final chance to farewell this place where once - long ago - he had felt like he belonged._

_The captain had granted Jadzia her requested time off, and wished them both the best of luck. Julian found that he was grateful. Luck was about all they could hope for. His last visit to the station had been so fleeting that, already, he scarcely believed that he had ever been there at all. But now, it was just a stop for Federation and Klingon ships to pass through on their way to battle - where too many of his own recent hours had been spent in the snare of a restless and yet peculiarly exhausting semi-wakeful slumber. Deep Space Nine was Dax's home. But somehow, it no longer entirely felt like Julian's._

"_You're awfully quiet," Dax had commented, glancing leftward from her position at the helm._

"_Mm." Too tired for more than a noncommittal grunt, Bashir leaned back in his chair and kneaded the fingertips of both of his hands._

_Jadzia sighed. "Switching to autopilot." She turned back to the console in time to key in the final command sequence - and, with a brief but contemplative look at the steadily advancing vista of stars, pushed herself lithely to her feet._

"_I'll…" She spoke with very little attention on her own words, and turned briefly towards the runabout's aft compartment. "I'll get us something to drink."_

_More tired than he was hungry or thirsty, Bashir responded with a silent nod. He rested his head against the back of his own padded chair, watching as Dax skirted around the dividing partition. In her absence, perhaps, was there just enough time? A moment, to close his eyes without her constant scrutiny - to will the ache behind his skull to subside, and to rub away the deeper pain of twisted muscles in his hands. But it would take him much longer to banish the memory of the secretive, anxious glances that Jadzia had already cast his way._

* * *

"She wants to keep me here, Dax."

"Did she tell you that?"

"Not in so many words." Bashir dropped cautiously onto both of his feet and crossed the short distance to the opposite corner of the room. He stayed for a moment, directing his gaze away from the sight of Jadzia's frowning eyes. "But words aren't the only way that a person can speak. And the worst part is, I'm not sure I have the energy to resist."

"Then don't," Dax advised him.

"Excuse me?"

"Don't," she repeated. "The authorities on Adigeon Prime acknowledged your transmissions, didn't they? If Doctor Larkin _is _still out there to be found, leave it to them to find her. Is it really so bad to stay where they can reach you when they do have news?"

_That's the problem_, thought Julian. _There isn't going to be any news._

Dax's calm blue eyes watched for a reaction. With a silence as though to squeeze all the air from the room, she sighed again, and the tension between them evaporated with her outward breath. "I ought to be going," she told him. "The others on DS9 will be expecting me back. Will you be all right?"

Bashir nodded, forcing his attention away from a dark mottled stain upon the surface of one wall. It had been three full minutes - almost four - since Doctor Nikos had quietly excused herself, and left the pair with privacy enough to speak alone. But the afterimage of her face lingered even more clearly now that she was gone. And there was another, the memory of a woman whose appearance had haunted him since his Academy days.

He shuddered, but presented Dax with nothing but a hastily patched-together smile. "In any case… I'll see you soon enough."

"Is that a promise?"

The tension eased in the expression of her friend. "I suppose it is," he conceded. "I could hardly pass up a chance to see the station again - and besides, I would hate to disappoint Miles."

"Chief O'Brien?" Dax sounded mildly incredulous. "Really? Is there something I'm missing?"

"Just racquetball," Bashir reminded her. For the first time in days, he was grateful for the gradual smile that had crept into his own expression. "He still thinks I owe him a game."

Dax chuckled. But as she turned to face the exit, Bashir reached up with one hand and quickly located the hem of her sleeve. His fingers closed loosely over the blue-green strip at its end. "Dax-" he began, suddenly voiceless again. He didn't look at her directly, but sensed her watching in silent anticipation. "I just want to say. Thank you."

Returning Bashir's smile, she clasped his hand. "It'll work out," she promised.

"I hope so." What further words may have been exchanged between them remained unsaid as Julian pulled her close into a brief but fond embrace. He was choking, unsure which of a multitude of feelings had risen so suddenly to seize the breath from his throat. But he separated himself with gentle certainty - and nodded in response to the silent query in her eyes. There was only one way to make their parting bearable: That the last expression she should receive from him could at least be a hopeful one.

_After all_, he thought. _There's a chance you may never see her again_.

* * *

The inner sanctum of Nikos' workplace was infused with a steady yellowish gleam, itself a mere shade away from white and reflecting partially from the walls on either side. The ceiling bore the appearance of swirling plaster, although lacking the same light, porous quality. Probably a modern imitation of older materials, guessed Bashir as he glanced at the patterns above his head.

Every passage was straight, perpendicular, and yet somehow not quite evenly arranged. The colour extending across each surface was broken at intervals by deep vertical cracks, where a touch of blue-green suggested the added potential of night-time illumination. When the main lights had dropped to nothing, and the eerie monochrome of sulphur-blue was all that existed to define each long corridor, these would reveal a path through the complex passageways. But in daytime hours, unvaried pastel hues lent a further illusion of size - high, broad ceilings making humanoid visitors seem remarkably small and detached from the scene.

The small, middle aged Bolian who guided Bashir through the building kept a constant eye on his progress regardless of whether she was directly looking his way. Echoes of their footsteps, and even the emptiness around him carried an air of unfaltering surveillance.

"Evening meals are at Nineteen Hundred Hours, lights out at Twenty-two Thirty. Everybody has free use of the common area before that time, and twice-daily supervised access to the courtyard. If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask." She rounded a corner to her left.

"And one more thing," she added. "Don't worry if some others round here get a little excitable on occasion. It's a regular part of life in a place like this."

With a periodic glance over her shoulder, the woman retraced her steps to where her latest charge had already started to fall behind. Extending a hand towards him, she took his arm.

"Don't." Julian extricated himself as politely as he could, and shifted a little further from the Bolian's reach. But shallow creases had appeared across her brow, shifting the hairless skin until it was not quite cast into the shape of a troubled frown. The eyes that looked into his were only slightly less blue than her complexion. "Please. I can manage on my own."

_It's only temporary_. He replayed Nikos' words of only minutes earlier, but found that he was even less convinced than when she had previously spoken them. In spite of any wishes of his own, he had already committed the in-house rules to memory. The passage offered very little distraction for his weary eyes, no change in the prevailing colour scheme, and even fewer glimpses of the outer world beyond. How many others had been handed the promise of a short term respite, only to have days turn to weeks, weeks to years - and hopes of freedom melt away like the last snow of an April dawn?

An old man stared and laughed as they passed, with little mirth and no obvious cause. The Bolian continued until he was out of sight, to where a mute young woman in a gown of moonlight blue watched from the narrow alcove between two cubicles. Thin strands of dark blonde hair hung in smooth, ghostly curtains around the edges of her face. Julian shuddered. He had seen that expression too many times already, most commonly in the indictments of ghouls that continued to haunt his dreams.

"That's not me," he whispered through tightly clenched teeth, pressing the lids of his eyes together as though self-induced blindness would banish the memory of both faces from his world. But with a single breath inward, he steeled himself to open them again. Who was he to assume such things? This woman belonged to the labyrinthine enclosure as much as Bashir did, or his guide. If anybody was out of place here, it was him.

The vigilant orderly turned again, continuing to force a smile. "Don't worry," she promised. "We're getting close."

He blinked, startled. "Close? To what?"

"Your section," the Bolian responded. Somehow, the echoes that followed her cheerful reassurance were even louder than those which had come before.


	4. Temporary Measures

A career in carpentry had never been entirely right for Richard Bashir. It had seemed like a good idea, when it had first attracted his attention - good enough to occupy seven full months of his life. But as with many other pursuits, he had started to feel increasingly out of place. There had to be something better - something more suited to who he _was_. He couldn't let himself miss that chance while looking in entirely the wrong direction.

He had worked almost obsessively to fashion the genuine mahogany crib, with all the details precisely suited to a mid-twentieth century style. At least there had been sufficient time to finish, before he left the carpenting trade behind him. Only the best, for the arrival of his first-born child.

Amsha's had not been a difficult labour, but a night of painful exertion had left her exhausted, too weary even to lift her head. But once the baby had settled into sleep, Doctor Palyath had smiled at the proud new parents - satisfied enough to allow them some time alone.

_A child_, thought Richard as he recalled the doctor's smooth face. The woman could hardly have seen a day away from school. Her hair had been cut into a thick bob with almost Vulcan precision. Her almond shaped eyes were wide like those of a deer, with long, curving lashes - and darker even than the caramel-cocoa hue of her skin. A brief parting smile only added to the youthful impression.

In the hours following, as Richard's family slept, he rested his head against a wall and gazed up at the symmetrical textures of the ceiling above. The touch of the Sandman was weighing him down as well, in spite of the pressure of a wall against his back. Even the immediate memory of his baby's first cry remained, and he held to it as long as he was able.

"Richard-?"

The face of his wife had lost none of its pallor - gleaming with spidery lines of white from the sweat across her brow. Her smile was tired, but endearingly sincere as she wrapped tired fingers around the hand of her husband. As captivating as it had been when Richard Bashir was a foolish youth, and Amsha the shy young woman in the house across the street.

"Can you believe it?" she whispered, quietly exhausted. She glanced to one side, as a mound of tangled shapes began to squirm in the shallow crib at the far end of the room. Soft, flexible blankets, wound into a cocooning bundle, came remarkably close to burying the creature within their folds. Amsha was weeping, tears gathering to crystal dew across her cheeks. "We have a son."

"I know," was all that Richard could say in response. He knew that other thoughts must have shown in his eyes, so many unspoken words that they ran together like flooded rivers converging - too powerful for even the steepest banks to contain.

He felt his own cheeks turn slightly moist at the sight of Amsha's smile, perhaps even at the sound of a softly whispered name - and found himself drawn to where the strange new life-form continued to stir in the midst of all the covers.

Carefully, he lifted the boy with both large hands and spread one across the back of his soft, downy head. The baby gurgled at his father's gentle touch, small clear bubbles spilling from between his lips. A settled face - as smooth as the touch of a warm Spring breeze. And with the tiniest beginnings of fine, dark hair arranged across his forehead like the flourishes of a calligrapher's brush.

His half open eyes were dark as black pearls, scrutinising the brand new world as though it would show him every answer that his elders had forgotten. One tiny hand passed clumsily across his nose, with a wrinkled palm directed outwards - and barely large enough to grasp the circumference of his father's index finger. After a long moment spent in contemplation, his mouth shifted slowly to a silent yawn, and he drifted into the calmer realm of sleep.

* * *

Only one door at its very end was there to give a contrasting shade to the next short, narrow, and otherwise featureless passage. Its image bobbed and expanded with every reluctant step as Bashir and the Bolian advanced towards it, until the walls seemed to close around them like a journey down some burrow or abandoned mining shaft.

To hesitate now would only strengthen the Bolian's misconceptions. He pressed forward, but covered the distance with trepidation.

The woman paused two steps in front of him, where a thin strip of circuitry extended around the inner circumference of the corridor. A soft blue-white glow extended all the way inward from the walls, and Bashir's breath snagged in his throat when he saw the speckled burst of energy. "What was that - a forcefield?"

"It's nothing to worry about." Half of the Bolian's mouth lifted into a lopsided, placatory smile. "We don't keep prisoners here."

Bashir stepped back. "Then why is there a field over the door?"

"Some of our patients can get a little unruly," his blue faced minder assured him. "That's all. But I doubt you'll have any real problems while you're here."

_That depends on how you define unruly_, thought Bashir with some unease – even as he shook his head with a noncommittal shrug.

"Well, that's a blessing, anyhow," the woman remarked as she keyed in a five digit combination on a lock embedded in the wall.

At the touch of her hand upon the controls, the door slid open.

Bashir was immediately confronted by a pair of dark, piercing eyes. A grinning face emerged from within, coming almost close enough for their noses to touch - "Who's this, mm? A new guy? Where's he from?"

"Now, Jack. You don't want to get overexcited."

This voice was tired, and a little wary. The speaker wore a Starfleet uniform identical to Doctor Nikos', with an undershirt of clear blue-green and two miniscule pips of reflective metal fastened to her collar. She was fair haired, Julian noticed, but with a touch of grey - and older than his Bolian guide. The lines of her face were determinedly set as she moved to intercept the sudden confrontation. But the frenetic young man dodged easily around Bashir and his companion until he had squarely repositioned himself in their path.

"Jack…" The Starfleet lieutenant's voice was taut and low.

The hem of his jacket slapped against itself as the man whirled around to challenge her directly. "What's the matter, Doctor - am I breaking the rules again? Getting too close, making everyone _uncomfortable_?"

"_Jack_-"

"Fine!" The pale-faced interrogator glared once at Bashir, taking in the entirety of the other man's appearance with two sharp jerks of his head. He inserted one fingertip between his teeth, and retreated to the back of the room, scowling repeatedly over his shoulder. "Wasn't that interested anyway."

Two long rows of bulky red chairs were arranged around five low, rectangular tables at their centre, each fastened securely to the floor. There were others, scattered around the edges of what Bashir could only guess was some variety of communal lounge. Barely half of them paid any attention to their unfamiliar new companion.

"Julian's going to stay with us for a while - isn't that right?" There was a clear, deliberately moderate cadence to the Bolian's answer – careful not to alarm an already unpredictable crowd. Jack cast another glance from his place at the corner of a smooth blue carpet, and continued to chew on the tips of his fingernails.

"_That _might be fun," said another voice.

It was easy to locate the pair of women positioned on the nearby chairs. One sat at an indirect angle with her hands in her lap and legs pressed together - never even glancing his way. But the other, taller woman grinned broadly at the new arrival with a mouth outlined in scarlet. She lounged easily against the padded back of her seat, and fixed her predatory gaze upon him. Bashir suppressed an inward shudder, setting a cool, stoic mask across his face. There was something clearly mocking in the woman's smile - a distinct impression that she was sizing him up for something.

The woman's face was plaguing Bashir's thoughts even as he forced his gaze away. With a quietly unsettled cough, he focused instead on the stripes of light cast inward through a series of tall, straight windows.

"Does this mean you'll be our friend?" A much shorter man shuffled towards them with a slight forward tilt to his spine. He moved purposefully until he was close enough for his eager, beaming face to fill the greater part of Bashir's vision.

"I…" What could he say? The Bolian orderly and the quiet Starfleet doctor were watchful - silently encouraging – but offered few hints on where the conversation ought to lead. There was tension in their faces, both tentatively hopeful that their newest arrival would settle quietly into this place, and that the place might gradually accustom itself to him.

Bashir glanced once more at the others around them, and finally back at the expectant older man. Frowning for a moment, reaching for an answer that felt right to him, he found that his shoulders had slumped in a long and heavy sigh.

"Possibly." He turned away. He was conscious of every distant wall, as though by some unwanted extra sense. Every step heavy and deliberate, he surrendered to the forward momentum of his feet, but realised there was no sure way to isolate himself from the stares of others in the room.


	5. Walls Around Us

_"Julian." The hand on his shoulder was a step away from painful, shaking him back to awareness. The pressure sent a constant signal to his muscles, strong enough to give him cause to squirm._

"_What?" he mumbled, frowning tightly. He had been dreaming of another time, another world - and of a boy whose family had allowed him a gift he imagined could even have been real. The chance to grow at his natural pace, without the alterations they had once thought so essential_.

"_Wake up." The voice was a woman's - soft and whispered, but at the same time gently insistent._

"_Was I asleep?"_

"_For over seven hours." It was Dax, he realised - with a softly musical laugh laced into her reply. "We're almost there."_

Almost…? _His eyes watered as he rubbed them with the back of one hand_. Almost, where?

"_Oh." The re-emergence of his memory was somewhat delayed, each moment slowly regaining its shape. Pushing away the stiffness of waking, Bashir flexed both shoulders and grunted as his knotted muscles cracked almost silently into place. He blinked at the viewscreen. _Of course_._

_They must have been travelling at a consistent pace, although long enough for unchanging pressures to bring an ache to the stiffened vertebrae of his neck._

_His first glimpse of their destination was of a sloping tower of thick, gleaming metal - its colour like that of dark polished bronze. Moonlight from an overhead satellite reflected from its smooth and semi-moist surface. He imagined perhaps that he could make out the texture of beaded rain - but with no hint that the surface of the facility would ever be marred by rust._

_Piloting the _Rubicon _to a small docking port near its entrance, Dax concentrated on each minute adjustment and brought it to a place where the curve of the outer wall had flattened. She smiled to herself at the sound of surfaces connecting._

_Bashir soon discovered that his chest was clenching - tighter, and tighter still as the remaining distance closed. Each of his breaths was restricted to a shallow gasp. The docking bay was an open mouth - dark jaws gaping to draw them inward. "Are you…?" He fought to keep his voice steady against the added pressure of Dax's blue eyes now fixed in his direction. "Are you sure this is… _right_?"_

_A frown came to Jadzia's thin, dark brows. "What do you mean?"_

_What _did _he mean? Opening his mouth to reply, Bashir discovered almost too quickly that no voice was emerging. Not even the habitual stammer that usually accompanied his moments of wordless uncertainty. With a shake of his head, he dismissed the Commander's query and moved reluctantly to the runabout's exit._

_Side by side, the pair came to a spacious lobby, supported by thick, strong columns, and with potted trees placed at intervals along both edges. The furniture was arranged in a symmetrical pattern, seeming to point the way to an empty desk at one end of the room. It sat beneath the slender, curving threads where an iron sculpture cast textured shadows on the wall behind._

_Confronted by this unfamiliar scene, Bashir concentrated instead on the simple in and out of air through his nose. He slowed his own breathing to keep pace with the beat of each cautious step. Even as their footfalls seemed to taunt and mock, he kept his eyes on his own and Dax's reflected images in the polished, sterile floor._

_He sensed that Jadzia was still matching his pace, her presence at his side a well-met reminder. She had once scolded him for despairing - accused him of arrogance for believing that a solution was nowhere to be found - and even now, the sting of her words remained. He could not give her a reason to doubt him again. And he knew only one way to avoid her disdain._

_Succeed_.

* * *

The night was met with tense anticipation. Bashir had no doubt that those in charge must have positioned hidden security devices in the upper corners of his room. But the shift from light to darkness at least gave to him his first illusion that he had parted from the scrutiny of others. Tossing irritably until his face was half buried in the pillow, he scowled at the shadows of radiating, half-dim lights. But the shadows gave him no answers, and he lacked the will to track down and disable whatever surveillance equipment had been stealthily concealed behind the walls.

"_But you must have some idea of how this kind of mutation works." He had spoken to Doctor Nikos with a far milder degree of frustration than he felt._

"_Of course." With a contemplative frown upon her face, the small, green eyed doctor turned a fraction in her chair and stroked the surface of her upper lip with the tip of one finger. "Living cells are exposed to a foreign catalyst - most commonly to harmful radiation - and in their attempt at self-repair, they occasionally mis-write their own genetic code."_

_Bashir nodded. "And as a result, DNA is scrambled. Sometimes incomplete."_

"_And you think that's what is happening in your case?"_

"_Not precisely. But it has to be something similar if what I've been told is even part way true."_

_The same doubt showed again in Nikos' light green eyes - the same reluctance to accept what her equipment was still only partially able to quantify, and even less to confirm. Once again, Bashir was reminded that not one person, except for him, had met the man from whom he had received his most vital information. But he could not allow himself to doubt its truth. Not now._

_He sighed. "All right," he said. "I'm here. Do whatever tests you think are necessary. But at least give me the means to contact Doctor Larkin on subspace."_

With nothing left to interrupt his thoughts save for the footsteps of orderlies patrolling the corridors outside, no other person was present to see him tuck his arms and legs tucked around himself and curl atop the narrow bed. Every breath shuddered, but he hid his face behind two splay fingered hands. All the control he'd fought to hold onto throughout the day broke from him and scattered to nothing, like smoke in the wind.

Perhaps Athena's initial assessments had not been so far from the truth, after all. Perhaps he did belong in these tiny quarters - as much as Jack, or any of the others he had encountered since his arrival. He would not be falling apart as he was, had he not been as meticulously constructed as his father had intended him to be.

* * *

"No messages today," the Bolian woman had answered Bashir's first query with the coming of a cool, bright dawn. He had eaten nothing through the course of that morning. Hunger was elusive, and even the thought of breakfast was more than he could bring himself to desire. With a sigh, he strengthened the grip of two barely steady hands around his elbows - until the tight, blunt pressure was enough to hurt the bones of his upper arms.

It was not Doctor Nikos, or even Larkin, or any of the inmates, whose face occupied his thoughts as he sat aloof from all others in the common area and gazed through the window to the colours beyond. Was this the road taken by those thoughts of old men as they looked out over some impersonal, unfamiliar yard - knowing that the last porch on which they would ever sit was far too likely not to be their own?

The opposite side revealed a small indoor garden, artificially lit although its resemblance to natural sunlight was almost indistinguishable. A slow moving beetle perched laboriously on the upper branches of one tall, exotic fern - which wavered with every shift in its centre of gravity. Colourful patterns moved across the surface of the insect's outer casing - thick and hard enough to weigh down every slender leaf. It lifted one leg, brought it forward with meticulous caution, and toppled down into the lower canopy.

Bashir's gaze broke away as soon as the creature was no longer within his sight. He had hoped that it would succeed in recovering its balance - although in truth, he had only half been watching its struggles. "I hope you're happy," he muttered, picturing another man's face in the semi-reflective pane. A bare sketch, pale and distant - blue eyes aimed his way with as little true concern as one might follow the progress of an ant on a wall.

_Well_? The words ran through Julian's head as clearly as if the man himself were standing over him - speaking them aloud. _Are you going to sit in that chair until you putrefy? Or are you going to get up and do something_? _I didn't tell you all of this for nothing, you know_.

_Then what _do _you want from me_? Bashir returned the challenge - but the phantom Sloan gave him no reply. Even as he turned aside, the image seemed to follow him, mocking all the way.

"_Boo_!"

The piercing dark eyes of another man stared intently into Bashir's. Jack had leapt up to crouch on the nearest previously vacant space, as though on the topmost bar of a climbing frame. He cackled gleefully at the other's startled reaction.

"Still here, then?" he challenged, biting his fingernails and glancing briefly around him. "I've heard of _you_. What'd they do, mm? Find you out? Did they peek all the way into your deepest, darkest secrets? Didn't take them very long now, did it? You used to be one of those Starfleet guys."

"I don't have to listen to this." Bashir staggered to his feet and shrugged one shoulder as if it shake off an unwanted pest. But however far he tried to go, the way was shut beyond the outer force field at the exit. The momentum of his attempted escape had diminished to nothing after only three short steps. He grimaced, but hid all the consequences of ill-considered movement before the others had a chance to see - but scowled when he saw that Jack had continued to dog his heels.

"They won't let you go," the other man promised, fiercely intelligent eyes sparkling brightly as they peered into Bashir's. "You're one of the crazy ones now, Mister Starfleet Guy. They'll tell you anything to keep you in line. But no-one's about to listen to a word of what you have you say."

He dropped his voice to a slow, controlled hiss, and leaned forward - still grinning - until he was close enough for Bashir to flinch from the heat and moisture in his breath. "They don't _believe _you."


	6. A Twisted Carousel

Theirs was a road of obstacles, of trials, good intentions, and compromised ideals. Their path was set, even before Richard and his son stepped onto the shuttle that was to transfer them to the first of three interconnected long range ships. The first irreversible step on the way to Adigeon Prime.

Confronted by a broad, matronly smile, Julian wriggled back to be closer to his father as the shuttle journeyed through successive layers of their world's azure atmosphere. Richard followed his gaze towards one elderly passenger, whose hair was thickly white around skin that was dry and crinkled as though from a loosely fitting overlay. Neither forced the other into an exchange of conversation, but Julian continued to stare at the crowd of older, larger Humans on both sides of the transport vessel.

Amsha had farewelled them both at the launching site, kneeling to kiss her son's cheek and bring him into a tight embrace. _Not for the last time_, Richard sent a promise through the distant ether, and still more fiercely, he swore the same to Julian's mother as well. Conscious always of the child at his side, he was no less plagued by distractions than he had been on the night before. A word, a glance, a moment of suspicion would be more than enough for all his good intentions to collapse around him.

The larger ship was easily visible through the nearest viewing port, glaringly bright along one side from the light of an uninterrupted Sun. Boarding shortly after the shuttle docked, Richard discovered before too long that he was uncertain of whether he was really the one guiding his boy through the corridors of the ship, or whether it was Julian's unstoppable curiosity leading _him _on. "In here," he chided, taking his son by the shoulders and ushering him through the appropriate entrance.

Their cabin aboard the transport ship was smaller than he'd anticipated. Slipping through the narrow entrance, Richard glanced at the sparse decor, and shook his head in disappointment. The boy and his father were two of only twenty or thirty passengers on board. There must have been some empty quarters, a better alternative, that he could exchange for this confining space without significant trouble.

"Well - it's quiet," he muttered to himself as the doors closed on the bustle outside. "At least that's something."

Julian raced immediately to leap onto a thin double seat at the cabin's outer edge, where he sat with his legs straight in front of him and a brown toy bear in his lap. He'd always been attached to that animal - as securely as to his very own shadow. Looking around with wide, inquisitive eyes, he plucked some lint from one of the teddy's slightly tattered ears, just as a high, bi-tonal chime sounded persistently at the door.

"Stay there, Jules," Richard scolded his son before the boy could run forward to see who was visiting. As Julian clutched his teddy with two small hands, craning for the best view, Richard adjusted his jacket and paused for a steadying breath.

"Come in."

The computer responded automatically to the sound of his voice, opening the cabin door at the pre-programmed command. The youth in the entrance paused with his hand still raised. He was dressed in the double striped uniform of a low level steward and his slightly mottled face was pale and yellowing like old paper.

"Travel documents please." He barely glanced at either of the two passengers as he lowered his gaze to a list of names on a padd in his hands.

Scowling with downcast eyes, he made a brief glance at the falsified documents that his passenger had provided - so brief that Richard wondered how he could have possibly noticed any of the contents. Eyes the colour of moss-covered stone finally made contact with those of Richard Bashir, and the youth slapped the older man's identity papers summarily back against his palm.

"Thank you for your co-operation I hope you have a safe and pleasant journey," he said with as little sincerity as if he'd recited the words from a cargo manifest. But Richard felt his own blood chill as for a moment, he found himself looking directly into a pair of small, dark eyes.

_You shouldn't have worried_, he told himself, nodding a customary thanks to the bored young steward. He doubted that even the likeness of a couple of gangly Talarian hook spiders on their false identity papers would have attracted any genuine scrutiny from this jaundiced youth.

Julian stopped to watch them both, feet treading on the air and with both hands firmly planted on either side of him. But the youth showed no more interest in father or son as he turned and disappeared on his way to the neighbouring tiny cabin.

Richard, too, avoided the boy's curious, questioning gaze. He tucked the lying padd back into the deepest corner of his travel bag. If he could stop Julian's face from entering his field of vision, it might even be possible to imagine that there _were _no eyes now watching him. He could not hold back the feeling that a line had been crossed, a point from which he could never return. If only he could feel that there was some accomplishment in the ease with which this initial deception had worked.

* * *

The constant turn of minute after minute bore a strange resemblance to a slow-moving carousel - with a relentless, grotesquely stilted melody marching slowly across the background. But the sensation they left him, the words that had been spoken, and the memory of Jack's pale face as he relished the silent discomfort of his companion, offered him no reprieve even as the time for each was past.

They faded slightly to the back of his mind like the shouts of a crowd as they walked away. But the standard past times gave no distraction. Before very long, a single thought was enough to bring every doubt stubbornly back into view.

"Mine," one old woman was insisting to anyone who came within two metres of her stack of metallic puzzle pieces, which she had gathered together on a central table. She continued to pile them atop each other in an oddly jagged sculpture. Julian took only a glance and very little time to bring it to completion in his head, just as he and several others were ushered away to an adjacent dining hall.

Why would the Adigeons not have returned his messages? he started to wonder - another of the recurring thoughts that had refused to let him be. Should they really be taking this long, or had his request been buried deep beneath an influx of subspace chatter? Nikos had urged patience, but with each passing minute, patience was turning increasingly to an unattainable art.

_But still_, he reminded himself, and clenched both hands. _It's only until you can find another place to go_. _This isn't the time to panic - at least, not yet._

Glancing down, Bashir contemplated the laden tray that had been pressed into his hands by a small, raven-haired kitchenhand. Her skin was pale as a flurry of loosely packed snow. "Really - I'm sure it's not necessary to…" He faltered under the force of the woman's stare, instead nodding politely, and silently. "Thank you."

Salted lamb stew. With a tower of thickly gelatinous gravy, and what looked like lumps of potato. He had smelled the overpowering, savoury odour from the door. At least it was soft enough for the blunt plastic cutlery to slice through it with little trouble. Scones might have been better, perhaps - but still far too heavy for such an hour. Was there really a time when the choice had been his?

The languorous brunette from the previous afternoon grinned suggestively as he passed her by, and Bashir barely managed to conceal a small, cold shudder. Carrying his lunch to a nearby table, he regarded the meal with mild distaste and thought about how much time it would take to grow unpalatably cold.

Bashir's still wandering thoughts quickly filled with all manner of ways in which a single message could be lost or abandoned, while those at the other end continued to wait in silence. He pressed one hand against the other until the tight, anxious pain had released itself a little from his chest - or more likely shifted into his stomach.

It wasn't too early to worry. Was it? Subspace communications could be slow over long distances, but rarely _this _slow. And others would never truly bear witness to Julian's part on this endless merry-go-round. Some might have spared a thought for each dizzy revolution, had he asked it of them. But on that day, he was very much riding alone.

He had to find a way to start working more of the controls.

"You after something?" A large, pock-faced man demanded of Bashir, head tilted into a challenge, arms folded so that the circumference of his arms bulged noticeably.

"I need to get to a computer interface. Is there any way to arrange that?"

"What would you want with a computer?" the orderly asked in a doubtful tone.

Julian opened his mouth, but without an answer. He stopped, mind working rapidly before he could gather enough of his thoughts to say a word. "I just want to check… something. Look, it won't take long…"

"Oh, right. And you expect _me _to arrange it for you."

The other man had sounded tired. Bored, even. And yet, there was something undefined beneath his response - subtle, but which no less caused Bashir's eyes to narrow.

He kept his voice low. "Listen. I don't expect you to care - just tell me where I can find a console."

"Is there a problem?"

He recognised the Starfleet doctor with the tight, weary face, first approaching from his right, who then stopped barely two steps away and watched their exchange with quiet attention.

Fixed by a pair of faces turned towards him, Bashir found that he was stuck in place as surely as if by the walls of a holding cell. "It's not important," he said. "Really. I just thought… If I could get to a computer, then…"

He could not locate the source of his sudden wary hesitation, but the doctor's failure to challenge his cool half-answer was many times worse than any other reaction he might have anticipated. If only he could figure out what he had seen in the eyes of her subordinate. With her own eyes briefly closed, the woman sighed wearily as though she had forgotten how to prevent herself from sighing. "If you're willing to be patient, I'll see what I can do," she told him. "But I'm afraid it may not be up to me."

"That's not true," accused Bashir. "Whatever happens in this wing falls under your jurisdiction. I checked the Institute files before coming here."

"It's not that simple, Julian."

"Why not?"

"I think you know," she responded. "I can't just hand over computer access without some idea of what you intend to do."

Bashir turned away, feeling a scowl heat the blood just beneath the surface of his face. "Never mind. Just…" He shook his head. "Just forget it."

The doctor's hand upon his wrist stopped him, accompanied by another audible sigh. "I'll have to speak to Doctor Nikos first. Return to your seat. Finish your lunch. And then, we'll see."

But with her back to her larger companion, she had not seen the smugness in his self-satisfied leer.


	7. The Infiltrator

The passage was level, but with every step as draining as though Bashir were climbing up a long, steep slope. The uncertainty of his movements was worse than it had been in his first waking moments of the morning. _Relax_, he told himself. _It's nothing. You're probably just hungry. _He did not feel any protests from his belly, but just because he had no appetite, did not mean that his body would not react. Barely noticing, he had somehow skipped the last three meals.

_Just don't say a word to anyone - or they'll never let you go_.

The maze of passageways beyond the common area were not entirely off limits, but Julian's presence would almost certainly attract some unseen attention. His gaze was drawn to the gaps in each wall where the back up lights had dimmed for the day. There - in the upper corner, and close to the point where wall became ceiling. It was the logical place for those in charge to have strategically positioned their covert but vigilant surveillance equipment.

Every sound was startling as a firecracker burst exploding at his back. Phantom pursuers chased him through the corridors, close enough in his imagination to send shocks of anxiety all the way to his extremities. He kept a sharp look-out, resisting an automatic need to turn and glance over his shoulder. The surest way to attract unwanted scrutiny to behave as though he expected it. He had learnt that lesson at the age of fifteen, when he'd uncovered the reason for all the lies of his early life.

* * *

_Lunch was no more appetising once Bashir had finally returned to his seat - distractions never far from the fringes of his mind. Even as the sight of the heavy stew came to fill the entirety of his attention, he doubted that his situation would change that afternoon._

_With a glance into the border of his visual field, he jumped - suddenly aware that another person was watching from less than a meter away. He had not fancied himself so easy to surprise._

_It was the quiet, petite young woman, whose Autumn shade of red-blonde hair was her first, most easily recognisable feature. Her movements were as quiet as those of a cat, and she seemed to hesitate a moment at his side. Before that time, she had not so far moved from the background. "Sarina?" Bashir dropped his voice instinctively to a whisper. He had never consciously noticed the dark and silent kindness behind this woman's eyes._

"_That's your name, isn't it? I heard some of the others…"_

_He faltered, looking down, and surprised to find that both of her hands were clasped around his. But he took only seconds to raise his head again with a confused and mildly puzzled frown. "What is it?"_

_Sarina's expression changed - turning with little visible movement to a shy, although quietly pleasant smile. Allowing her hands to slip away, she stepped around him and continued on her way towards the exit._

_Bashir clasped both hands as quickly as he could, careful to conceal the tiny blinking device now nestled in his open palm._

* * *

Crimson light cycled across four evenly distributed points on the surface - even though the machinery itself was little bigger than a cufflink, and easily concealable where he had folded up the end of his sleeve to a point two thirds of the way from his wrists to his elbows. He did not know what instinctive notion was telling him that the shy young woman had heard his conversation in the dining hall - but he was no less convinced for all her continued silence.

One door in particular caught Bashir's attention and halted his stream of introspective reasoning. He instantly recognised the twisting and highly stylised emblem emblazoned across the outer wall. Two snakes curled around a straight, winged staff, forming a shape not unlike a strand of Human DNA. The symbol of Starfleet Medical had an ancient tradition, reaching back to the early religions of Earth.

Quietly surreptitious, he plucked the override device from its place of concealment, and finally let a single breath escape through his half open mouth. As he had suspected it might, the locking mechanism on the door gave way with little resistance to a brief but concentrated energy pulse radiating from the direction of his hand.

_Where am I_? He stepped through the open door and into a barely lit and narrow room. It had neither the size nor the complicated apparatus of a proper Infirmary, more basically equipped than even the _Defiant_'s Medical Bay. Two long beds were positioned on either side, bookends to a trio of chairs facing inward at their centre. _Some kind of clinic_, Bashir assumed. He swallowed back a tide of bitter guilt - rising like bile, and which never entirely settled at the centre of his gut.

But then, what else was he to do? The challenge swelled to overwhelm his thoughts, even more powerful than the stomach churning uncertainty that had preceded it. Leave the room behind? Go back to the empty remnants of his life, to sit and wither in that deceptively gaudy but no less stale communal space?

Computer connections were very nearly omnipresent in modern facilities such as this - and basic functions were easily accessible by a simple voice command. Holding his breath, Bashir allowed his gaze to pan around the room. There had to be a terminal somewhere nearby. More importantly, a screen to show him the images he needed to see.

There were colours at his right, infusing the semi-darkness with a soft, luminescent hue. _A computer panel_? Julian wondered. With barely enough courage to allow himself the sound of a sigh, he crept forward until the console was within his reach. "Computer." He winced at his own half-suppressed vocalisation, but was relieved to be answered with nothing but a soft, mechanical chime. "Display outgoing message logs, beginning from Stardate 51320."

"Please enter authorisation code."

_Damn_.

With his jaw clenched so tightly that he could feel the surfaces of his teeth begin to grind, Julian was only fractionally successful at holding back the curse within his throat. He should have expected such a response. No, he corrected the previous sentiment. He _had _been expecting it. Starfleet officers were rarely stupid. He could hardly have believed that they would neglect to include a security protocol within their network's central processor.

"Where's Quark when you need him?"

Bashir's head was aching - subtly, but persistently - and with every passing moment, it grew more difficult to ignore. So, he was out of the computer. The question was - short of hailing a passing Ferengi merchant - what in the world could he do about that?

As automatically as if by telepathic direction, he looked down - and only now recalled the pressure of Sarina's override device against his hand. With the hasty drumming of his pulse already gathering strength as it rushed past his ears, Bashir was reminded of the slender isolinear rods that Quark kept hidden and used to break through the station's computer systems. He still clasped Sarina's gift between the tips of three fingers.

Gripping tightly, so as not to let it fall, he swept it experimentally across the length and breadth of the console's gleaming surface - and wondered briefly how far its abilities would extend.

The device in his hand emitted a subdued beep as it interfaced with the Institute computer. Five columns of initially incomprehensible shapes flashed and changed over the surface of the terminal screen. As Bashir watched, he started to recognise patterns in the apparent chaos - a detailed yet elegant algorithm starting to gather from the randomness around it.

"Thank you, Sarina," he whispered. Even a Ferengi would have been challenged by such a complex decryption sequence.

He leaned forward to watch the data ascend to the top of the screen. "Wait," he hissed - in a voice near to silence. The shifting columns before him stopped abruptly. Five lines down - that was the name that he had been hoping to find. A transmission to Adigeon Prime, from the office of Doctor Athena Nikos. At least he could be sure that she had passed along his message. There was no indication of a reply - but the name of the recipient…

"I don't suppose there's anything else on this file?" he muttered. Another harsh mechanical chime gave immediate confirmation to all of his doubts, and there was no indication that he was connected to any non-Federation databases.

Bashir reached up and scratched the pain of taut muscles away from the back of his neck. _Better not stay too much longer_. He glanced to his left, half expecting to find an accusatory face at his shoulder, but discovered only darkness and empty space. Nothing had reached his ears, he realised, except the sound of foundations cooling.

"One more thing, Computer." Even his hushed commands increased his sense of disquiet. "I need an open channel… to… er… To Deep Space Nine."

* * *

"Good Lord! Julian?"

It was a familiar face that appeared on the screen. A high, round forehead, topped by a layer of curly, light brown hair. Narrow eyes squinted intently. "What in the world…?"

"I guess I'm the last person you expected to see." Bashir discovered that his voice had turned slightly apologetic - although secretly glad to have encountered this face and not another. But he held his breath, anticipating the response.

Miles O'Brien snorted quietly, eyebrows raised. "You could say that. I thought you were supposed to be taking some time away."

"Who told you that?"

"Someone who should've known better, it seems. Then I'm assuming this isn't just a social call."

Julian shook his head. "Chief, I… er… I have a favour to ask."

"What kind of favour?" The frown was deep across O'Brien's brow.

Bashir set aside a wave of quiet resentment - although the feeling continued to clench inside his belly. It was hardly fair of him to react so negatively to the doubts of his friend. "I think I might have a contact in the Adigeon system," he began. "But all I can find is a name."

"And you want _me _to…?" The Chief's head was shaking in apparent incomprehension.

"Set up a link to Adigeon Prime," insisted Bashir. He glanced warily over one shoulder, but the peripheral movement that he believed he had seen was merely the effect of an animated standby graphic in another nearby corner. Heart racing dizzyingly, he turned back to O'Brien. "See what information you can find. I may not have access again - not for long enough to do this myself."

"But you think that I can?"

"If anyone can dig up half-buried files… And listen. I don't know when, and I don't know how - but I will find a way to get back in touch."

O'Brien sighed. "I s'pose it won't do much use to say no," he said, sounding ever more dubious with every word. "But wouldn't you rather be talking to the captain?"

"No." Bashir trusted Sisko, but all instinct told him that he was as likely to focus on the irrationality of his former subordinate's pleas as he was to heed them.

He shook his head, suddenly bitter enough to send a brief flush of heat into his ears. "I should never have agreed to come here in the first place."

_There. You've said it_.

_So now what_?

"Julian?"

He looked down, and discovered that his hands were gripping the edge of the furniture, so hard that his fingernails were set to press against the surface. A faint ache had come to the back of his head. Glancing up again, he saw a frown spread across O'Brien's creased and pink-tinged brow.

"Are you all right?"

"Of course. Why?"

Looking away so quickly that his initial reaction barely showed, O'Brien gritted his teeth against a temptation to raise a comment. Bashir found himself wondering exactly what the others on Deep Space Nine had been told about his situation. His own role had been central in several similar briefings - but the sickly, lightheaded feeling remained, forming a shroud around his attempts to think.

The moment of unsteadiness had only lasted a second. But there was still a mild gasp behind his voice. He shifted his centre of gravity so that much of his weight was supported by the tabletop, and blinked until his focus returned. "Sorry, Chief. It wasn't intentional."

Miles O'Brien was shaking his head. His expression changed to one of heavy resignation, as heavy as the sigh that escaped through his mouth. "Listen - I promised Keiko I'd call…"

"I'll leave you to it, then." Bashir's own voice was so small that he barely heard it himself. He gestured helplessly to nothing in particular, before hunching slightly as he turned to go. It was becoming a habit.

"But I'll see what I can do," O'Brien offered suddenly. "What was the name of that friend of yours?"

"What…?" Bashir paused for a moment, looking back. Of course. He still hadn't mentioned their contact by name. "Naron," he replied. "You think there's a chance?"

"It might take a while, but I can try."

The younger man smiled - although still a little sadly. "Thanks, Chief."

But his smile disappeared almost an instant after the transmission had ended. With the return of darkness, his eyes were wide, their focus sharp. He was even more aware of the sudden approach of voices from outside.


	8. Spotlights Converge

A semi transparent pane, clouded and obscure like chalky water, gave Bashir his only view of the world beyond the clinic. But there was still enough light coming through to reveal a trio of moving silhouettes - gathered together less than a metre outside the entrance.

Grappling for the desk behind him, its edges were all that could steady Julian's hands. Even his heart seemed to freeze in mid-beat. He was struck by a sudden urge to pull himself back into the darkest, most distant corner he could find. To pass through the very walls - if only he had the means.

Confronted by a dark face and a pair of grey-green eyes, Bashir's attention went next to Nikos' two companions even before the sudden influx of light had entirely cleared from his vision. Both wore identical Starfleet Medical uniforms, although the smaller of them was barely half the height of her senior. The last to enter tilted his head to look past the length of a prominent nose. Bashir was certain that this newcomer had deliberately exaggerated the circumference of his chest and belly. He was an officious looking officer with four brass pips aligned almost perfectly along his collar. Each was marked by a crescent reflection in the scantily distributed light.

His admonishing gaze, round, pocked face, and tangled brows brought hints of recollection. There had been rumours about this man, whispered through the living halls of Julian's medical school. Few in Starfleet knew the details, and even less information had reached the crowd of students - who were more concerned with their Anatomy test than with the vagrancies of a barely known commander, sitting behind his far away desk. What was he now? A ship's captain? An administrator of some kind? He might have been promoted to Admiral - if not for something damning and inaccessible still lingering in his service record.

And Julian Bashir could have been Chief of Surgery at a hospital in Paris. He tightened his grip on the supporting corner of the console.

Nikos stepped forward, glancing from Julian to the two bewildered strangers, quickly gathering all she could of the situation before her.

"You're a little early for your appointment, Julian." She focused almost entirely on the place where Bashir still stood. "But you might have done better to have waited outside."

With only the briefest pause, the middle aged doctor turned acknowledge the others. "My apologies, Captain. Might we possibly be excused for just a moment, and I'll join you again shortly. I'm sure that Lieutenant Lim would be glad to show you the rest of our facility."

A tiny, pleasant looking young woman - although not particularly remarkable, Lieutenant Lim had remained in the background - silent and obscure. She nodded quietly, casting no more than a single uncertain glance at Nikos and Bashir, as she stepped aside to indicate the exit.

* * *

"I heard you were asking to use our computers." Nikos turned one of the nearby chairs around to settle comfortably upon it. "If you had only been a little more patient, I might have been able to help. At the very least, it might have saved you from the need to resort to breaking and entering."

"I knew the odds weren't good."

"What is it, Julian?" The woman's wide-set green eyes watched him even more closely. "You can trust me. I promise - nothing you say will go beyond these walls."

She paused, noting the tension in his face - his eyes refusing to make contact with hers. "Is that it? You don't trust me?"

Bashir stopped short of taking the empty seat that she had offered - watching instead with quietly wary eyes. One hand rested against the console to steady him until his balance was restored. If he spoke, if he stayed silent, even if he made any move to approach her… None of his actions would escape the doctor's notice. But she was as likely to take note of his silence as she was to respond to his words.

"I wish I could," he whispered.

Fingers locked together in front of her, Nikos continued to study him for several increasingly uncomfortable moments. But she sighed, nodding quietly to herself, and shifted her position a little. "To be honest," she conceded. "I've been hoping for a chance to speak to you. About your latest test results…"

"You haven't found anything."

Turning slightly to look away, Bashir rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. It had been Athena Nikos' expertise in the field of applied genetics that had led his successor on Deep Space Nine to suggest that he seek her assistance in the first place. But with her silence extending even beyond the imagined echoes, Julian continued to watch her closely, keeping his own expression carefully neutral. "In that case--" he concluded finally. "Perhaps it's time to check out of this place."

"I'm not entirely sure that would be wise."

"What do you mean?"

"I think you should stay at the Institute," she explained in quiet resignation. "Just until I can run some more tests. Given all that we've learnt so far, I still think that it's our best available option."

"I'm dying while you run your tests," Bashir insisted, teeth clenched. "Trust me, Athena. There is no other choice."

"You don't know that," responded the green eyed doctor.

"I can _feel _it."

"Look, I'm sorry." The doctor shook her head. "But I can't simply allow you to go all the way to the Adigeon system on the basis of no more than the vaguest hunch. What if something goes wrong? What if the Dominion decides to take you back again? I can't be responsible for that."

"You're keeping me here?" Jack had seen it. And, if Julian was truly honest, so had he.

He stared, breathing shallowly through his open mouth. The floor lurched and shook as though broken to the consistency of quicksand - as he staggered back and grabbed the nearest available shelf. But, you can't…"

"I don't see that we have any other option," persisted Nikos, hands spread wide and with her palms towards him. "Let's just say that we wished you good luck, and sent you on your way. There's no guarantee that you'll find anything once you get there. I'm only thinking of your interests."

Bashir pressed himself as tightly as he could against the edge of the table - overbalancing, but only briefly. A ragged pain in his throat was enough to identify every laboured gasp his own. "What…? My _interests_? How would you even know what they are?"

"I can't stay in this place." He spoke without a thought. It was only two steps to reach the door. Beyond it, a corridor, where he had first entered with Commander Dax at his side. Possibly even a shuttle bay. There would have to be someone willing to take him. "You can't… You're not keeping me here."

"Julian…" Nikos approached, reaching forward, speaking his name. He was already light-headed. Nauseous. As though watching himself from a very long distance and seeing only the approach of sheer, inescapable panic. He shoved away Doctor Nikos' first attempt to take him by the arm. Jarring pain coursed through his right elbow - which he clutched to himself as he stumbled against the corner of the table.

_No_-- _Go away_.

This was wrong. Some distant part of his mind could not stop plaguing him with the same insistently recurring thoughts. They had always been there. Lurking like a predator beneath the algae-obscured waters of an unknown swamp. He had been the self-assured young doctor - the one in control. And he already knew where this would lead, if his breathing and heartbeat continued to accelerate as they were.

Nikos was moving forward again, still speaking his name. "Careful," she cautioned him. "Julian - try to stay calm."

He blinked, staggered, shaking his head and only belatedly recognising the cold, blunt pressure against the skin of his arm. The face before him was dark and fuzzy, as though viewed from a deep hole. "What are you…?"

Yet again, the floor was starting to spin away.

Sick at the core of his stomach, his heart was still pounding as the door slid open and more unfamiliar voices blended together in a subdued but anxious chorus.

"Let's get him to Isolation." One came from the darkness, louder, closer and sharper than all the others. There were more hands now supporting his weight, manipulating him like a puppet against even the most determined of his weak and sluggish protests. What more resistance could he give, when he was barely able to raise his head from the floor? Certainly nothing that was destined ever to be heard.


	9. Shades of Darkness

A series of tall, rectangular portals were positioned in a row along one wall, folded near the top at a straight, obtuse angle. The revealed a sky that was growing pale with sunset, and a scattering of many-textured walls and sloping beige rooftops. The lower ledge was barely ten centimetres above the eye level of Richard's son. Curling his fingers around a corner, their tips pressed hard against the upper surface of the windowsill, Julian tilted his head and pulled himself up onto the very tips of his toes.

Threads of a bright and yet elusively haunting melody found their way in through the outer walls - but even Richard's ears could not pinpoint their direction with any clarity. It was a pleasantly lively addition to what would otherwise have been a long and sterile silence. He decided that he didn't mind the company of this continued noise. The instruments were unfamiliar - but not indistinguishable. A vaguely reedy flute or hollow pipe, blending easily with the call of strings, percussive wood, and sonorously ringing bells.

Stepping from the lift to a long hallway on the hotel's uppermost floor, he had steered his son through the entrance while the smoothly geometric doors closed tightly at their rear. He glanced around the unfamiliar space, wondering briefly whether they should even unpack. Only one night remained before they would have to travel East, to the outskirts of this tangled city where the doctors had sworn that his six year old boy would be transformed, by the time that they were done.

Julian stepped away from the window's edge - and glanced fervently around him before alighting finally on a thin, shallow chair in the farthest corner. Determination deepened the furrows across the bridge of his nose. Grasping each side of his chosen prop with short, childish fingers, he started to edge it gradually towards the window.

"Jules," his father scolded, moving forward to halt the youngster's forward progress. "Leave that."

The boy still held the chair, but set it down and turned around slightly as if only now remembering that his father was with him in the room. "But I want to see."

"Not from there," persisted Richard. "It isn't safe."

"Why?"

"Because you might fall off."

Pouting so that his brows dropped into a frown, Richard's son paused for a brief and focused contemplation of the chair. He examined the seams along its back, and shook it so hard that for a moment, the sound of rattling metal filled the room. Sighing, he abandoned his efforts and trudged to the shallow bed. His doleful eyes turned slowly to where the scene outside was still invisible to him.

_You promised him adventure_. Richard pulled his coat from its place beside the door, and stopped for just enough time to gather his son's.

"Don't forget your shoes," he said. "And put this on. It's cold outside."

Julian beamed.

* * *

"How do you feel?" Nikos' voice floated softly through several layers of darkness.

Why did it have to be her?

Bashir had woken to memories of the Anniversary parade, where his father had taken him over twenty years ago. But to his waking mind, it had seemed that he and all those he'd ever cared about were back in those lively streets in the Western Quarter of Adigeon's capital. The cheerful strains of music, overwhelming colours, crowds of pale, strangely elongated humanoids and occasional aliens like himself and his father - all had briefly seemed as real as a dream could be. Exhausted by the noise and excitement, the younger Julian had held to his father, who wrapped his boy in both strong arms and carried him back to their suite at the hotel.

Half on his side, half on his chest. Arms folded. One hand facing upwards, with fingers curled to rest against his cheek. He was warm and heavy - unable to open his eyes. Every breath carried a bitter taste like something rotting, and he found himself gagging as the muscles clenched all the way from his stomach to his throat.

In the blackness that surrounded him, even the slightest of noises cut all the way through the bones of his skull. He groaned beneath his breath, through lips too numb to form a proper sound.

"Keep still," Nikos told him. "_Relax_. You had a bout of nausea - that's all. It will pass."

Journeying back through his most recent memory, perhaps there had been that moment of semi-awareness - consumed by a powerfully unsettled sensation, slowly unfurling at his core. Could that be why his throat still burned? Why he still felt a residual film of moisture where someone had wiped a damp, lukewarm cloth across his mouth? "I can't…" He was drifting - but focused hard, holding to the world as though to a life-sustaining dream. "Why can't I move?"

"You're in a restraining field," Nikos explained. "Don't worry. It's only temporary."

_Like everything else he'd experienced here was temporary_? _Like agreeing to come in the first place was only temporary_?

Bashir felt the pressure of a hand upon his shoulder, answering another nauseated grimace. Its contact was broken as he tensed as though to shy away. A shift in the air left him with a passing hint of lavender-scented perfume. Usually a mildly pleasant smell, but which today only reinforced the ache in his stomach.

There was a definite change in the direction of Nikos' voice, which dropped to half-volume. Her face remained unseen. "Keep the field in place for now. Let's err on the side of caution - but I think we can afford to let the sedatives wear off naturally."

Julian's ears caught a distant, efficient, and mildly throaty response.

"But… It won't do any good." Speech came slowly, hauled to the surface as though from the bottom of a deep, black well - and pieced together only with tremendous effort. "Just let me go."

The silence beyond his small, dark world was unbearably long, until he found himself wondering if he might have missed Nikos' reply. But her voice - when it came - was soft and husky; laden with what sounded like a moment of bitter anguish. "I'll check on you soon."

_What's the point_? Bashir wanted to demand of her, but failed to object beyond a nearly silent, wordless grunt. It didn't matter. All the gentle surrounding noises had started their retreat, and there was still a part of him - the part that had witnessed such scenes from Athena's position - that understood the prudence of her actions. She wanted to keep him calm and still, say nothing to agitate him any further. At least until he was past the point where he was likely to do something harmful.

As the soft edged warmth of Nikos' sedative pulled him back into a place where not even dreams could find the means to enter, he wondered what else it was she had so clearly wanted to say.


	10. Isolation

_Well_, thought Bashir with a touch of irony. _It's better than Solitary_. The isolation ward was divided into two rows of evenly matched, adjacent cubicles, each closed off by the steady glow of a forcefield generator. A single bed in a small, enclosed room, with little else to break the dark, dull brown of his surrounds. The suggestion of a door was narrowly visible, no more than two or three centimetres peeking around the outer edge of the cell.

But it was no less a prison than any other he had encountered. The temperature in this enclosure was warmer than it had been in many other sections of the complex, leaving him flushed and slightly moist from the sweat across his skin. It kept him drifting in and out of a shallow sleep, barely sensing where the boundary could be found. He wondered if there was something in the air of this particular cubicle - a colourless, odourless chemical infused into the closeted air. Someone must have set the controls deliberately, in order to keep him quiet and drowsy.

_That's what I would have done_.

"What's that for?" A soft voice, forced through numb, dry lips with no more than a shallow breath to give it substance. He glanced down through lids that still struggled to open, at the band of thin coloured tubes nearly half way around the circumference of his upper arm. Sighing, he glanced back up at Athena Nikos' watchful green eyes. A steady neon glow outlined the edges of her face, and cast her skin in a peculiar shade - neither entirely blue, nor entirely olive-brown. Her approach had been quiet and tentative, almost missed by the man who watched her from the shallowly padded, sloping bed.

"You've stopped eating again," she challenged. "Haven't you? I'm not about to let you starve."

Julian scowled moodily. "I'm fine," he insisted. "_Now_."

"Oh, really?"

His head still ached as though from a particularly hectic double shift. A dull, throbbing pain - changing its position and intensity with every movement; renewing the discomfort to which he had thought himself accustomed. He scowled back down at the blinking lights still fastened to his arm, until hot tears prickled across the surface of his eyes. "What makes you think I won't just take it off as soon as your back is turned?"

"_Julian_--" His name, turned to accusation. Nikos allowed her expression of admonishment to turn just slightly hard. "Believe me. I'll know if you do."

But even while he was reluctant to admit it, there were questions remaining - which only she could answer. Bashir looked away, avoiding Nikos gaze as she opened the scanner, and did his best to distance himself from the mechanical song and flashing coloured lights. "What is this place?" he asked her softly.

He watched Athena Nikos pause at his side, and run an open palm over her dark, untamed hair. "I'm not sure I understand…" she began.

"You say I'm here for my own good," he attempted to explain, still with no clear knowledge of where he may have been leading his thoughts.

"I'm not the only one here with enhancements, am I?"

"No." Doctor Nikos showed no surprise to hear him voice this simple assumption.

"But that's not all. There's something else…"

Nikos stopped, deflated as though her head was suddenly far too heavy to lift. "This is wrong," she muttered to herself. "I don't care what Starfleet says - I can't keep doing this any longer."

Pausing for a moment of troubled reflection, Julian allowed the older doctor's response to settle in his mind. Her striking green eyes were closed as she massaged their corners with a finger and thumb. Diffuse light from above and behind her seemed to augment the creases beneath her lower lids.

"The problem is, Julian--" Her gaze never broke away, but she hesitated through the beginnings of a halting confession. "I probably shouldn't be telling you, but… There is more to this than a question of personal safety."

"What do you mean?"

There was something melancholy, a little too attentive, in the doctor's cat-green eyes. "It has to do with what you told Starfleet Command," she explained quietly. "There are some… Not _all_, but some mind you, who have been very concerned about what it might mean - if the Dominion were to capture you again."

Bashir's breath caught in his throat, but he did not doubt that Nikos had noticed. "That makes no sense," he protested - still with the same hoarse gasp behind his voice. "There are so many others, who would…"

"It's not just that," said Nikos. Julian saw her suppress a grimace, slightly tensing the corners of her mouth. "Think about it, Julian. They targeted you, specifically from the shuttle - not just another random passenger. That has Starfleet very disturbed."

"_They're _disturbed?"

He sensed the bitter taste at the back of his throat. Nikos shifted, visibly uncomfortable. "It will be all right, Julian…"

"No." He choked on his own voice, wishing he could scream. "No - it won't."

_So you keep me moving. Keep me breathing… At least for now. But this isn't about helping anybody_. _It's about hiding them away from sight_. _Because whatever you can't see, is so much easier to forget_.

Bashir closed his eyes again, hoping with all his will that the silence would continue. _Say nothing_, he begged of Doctor Nikos. It was the only remaining thread of control still left to him.

"I… I'd like to be alone now. Please."

* * *

When next he discovered a way to open his eyes, they were too dry to let him focus on the room around him. As he had wished, Athena Nikos no longer watched from anywhere that he could see. _But then_… The thought remained unfinished. Somehow, he sensed - for once - that nobody was monitoring him either.

Had he slept? If so, he was as unsettled as ever - half awake, but immobile as though in the middle of a dream. There was something else, something out of place that he could not immediately identify. He hesitated, straining blindly through a veil of blackness. From a shapeless single tone, outlines came gradually, sharpening from a soft edged blur. It took another few seconds for his vision to adjust - enough to notice that his surroundings were never meant to be so dark.


	11. Calls From Distant Places

The corridor extending to a long, geometric tunnel, seeming to trap and amplify even the weakest of echoes. Hard soles, connecting with the surface of clean, gleaming tiles, were louder and nearer with every beat. Julian's wide, attentive eyes stared along the length of the passage. He had already ceased fidgeting at his father's side, where Richard spared a two-second glance in Julian's direction, finding a nervous blend of curiosity and trepidation in the eyes of his boy. The child was hunched a little, still, and tense - as though to shrink away from the steady rhythmof footsteps drawing near.

The white-faced stranger was smaller than she had appeared in their earlier communications, lab coat billowing outwards with the breeze that her steps created. "Hilary Larkin." She stopped to address Richard Bashir, her right hand straight and tense as she extended it for him to shake. "We spoke over subspace."

Uncertain of what response he ought to give, Richard nodded. "I remember."

The boy glanced nervously at both older Humans - each one easily twice his size. His gaze lingered longest on the face of his father, searching for a cue on how to react to this china-white woman who had come into their midst.

Minute creases of middle age had started to form around the corners of her mouth and beneath her heavily shadowed eyes. But her pale, smooth face was free of any further blemish. Hair the colour of moist soil, gleaming in the light, was clipped back into a harshly perfect bun behind her head. Looking down towards the child at Richard's side, Larkin's scrutinising eyes gathered every detail of his upturned face. "You must be Julian," she said with all the sincerity of a computer running through a script. "It's good to meet you, finally."

"He… Hello." Julian's mumbled reply had struggled through a soft, uncharacteristic stammer. He continued to watch as the woman's hand reached down to just below the level of his eyes.

"Go with the lady," said Richard, giving the boy a gentle push. Larkin was already taking his hand, leading him away down the lengthy passage.

* * *

"This is your room now, Jules."

Despite his father's encouragement, the boy still hesitated just beyond the entrance. He cast a silent glance around the clean, but sparsely furnished space. A bed, a covered window, and a single child-sized chair pressed up against the outermost corner. Gleaming black monitors, arranged in a line, stretched from end to end across one wall, where sculpted images of vivid, exotic fauna were caught in the middle of an energetic dance around their edges. Julian stared at this garish but oddly empty display, and tightened both hands around the chest of his bear.

The unreadable eyes of Larkin's nurse turned slowly to peer at Julian, as her willowy hand reached out to rest upon his shoulder. "This way," she instructed him in a soft and airy, whispered voice. "Let's find out how much of the city we can see through the window."

The boy fidgeted quietly, glancing over one shoulder with eyes as round as two bright pennies. "Go on," said Richard, struggling not to choke on his moment of faltering confidence. Slender, milk-white Adigeon fingers wrapped lightly around Julian's back, sharp and colourless when contrasted with the darker tones of his skin and hair, and the grey-blue fabric of his jumpsuit.

As the pair settled upon the bed, Julian scrambled towards the window and knelt at the point where a high window provided a view of multiple high, pointed rooftops. They were strangely matched, Richard noted. The small, brown Human and the elongated body of the taller, milky-pale nurse. The muscles had tensed around Larkin's eyes and mouth - turning her face just slightly hard as she directed her attention immediately to Richard.

"Mister Bashir, if you have no objections, then there are still some matters we ought to address. This will only take a moment."

Still with both hands pressed against the windowsill, Julian's gaze broke momentarily from the view. He watched his father accompany the doctor as they retreated across the polished yellow-white floor.

"From what I can understand of these results, our initial tests have proven quite promising," she informed him, pausing for a cursory glance at a thick, square padd in her hand. With no easily perceptible movement, her eyes had again made contact with his. Her voice showed no sentiment beyond quiet, level efficiency. "If everything continues to go smoothly, as they have done so far at least, I see no reason why we can't begin as early as tomorrow."

She paused, and Richard realised that the doctor's strange hypnotic gaze had been studying him for many minutes longer than he had noticed.

"Are you certain that you want this, Mr Bashir?"

"Of course I…" Richard faltered. The gleam in Larkin's eyes was even brighter than when she had first spoken. She held him motionless - like an insect in a museum display. Her eyes narrowed only fractionally, but the expression brought a tense, blunt pain into her visitor's throat.

"I need to be certain that you've thought this through." The low, intense half-whisper was soft enough to force her audience to heed every word. "Above all else, I need for _you _to be certain. Because from the moment we begin the procedure, it can never be stopped, and never reversed."

When had Richard ever thought about anything else? It had been so long already, that the memories had already faded to dim, grey ghosts. When had he last been able to breathe with freedom, without the pain of worry clenching around his heart. Even the most restless nights, when thoughts of sleep had mocked him from just beyond his reach, had never been as painful as the sight of Amsha sitting quietly at the kitchen table, light from outside shifting over the tears that had gathered in her eyes.

"Right." Richard held the doctor's gaze as resolutely as he could manage, but his voice was hoarser than he had intended it to be. He nodded, lips set into a tight, determined line. "Tomorrow."

* * *

It happened so often. The sudden departure of a steady, background hum was as startling to Bashir as an unanticipated noise might otherwise have been. And as heavy as the warm, lethargic air that had continued to press down against his chest. Eyes closed, every breath deliberately even, he felt a slight chill of air passing to the very back of his nostrils. The same blunt ache shifted to the back of his head, as though in answer to the summons of gravity.

_But you can't stay here forever_. The field was down. It had to be. There was no need for him to look, merely to ascertain that much. Alone, surrounded by darkness - he noted every moment of discomfort within his gut, at the imagined spectres coming forth from places he would never see. And as long as he made no move to find them first, the real intruders could not be far beyond those constructed from shapes and shadows.

He swivelled around and rubbed his head, before pulling the band from his arm and dropping it to the unoccupied mattress at his side. The level floor seemed to dip and spin, grey spots dancing briefly across his eyes - as a thermal draught might lift a dust cloud to obscure the form of distant landscapes. Still close to blind in the deepening shadows, he stared past outlines that were still only partly distinct from the shapeless background. His legs held their balance with grudging tenacity - but with both hands firm against the mattress of the thinly covered bed, his feet held fast to the cold, uncarpeted floor.

A whispered call, as soft and mocking as any he'd heard, came briefly from the lightless spaces at the corridor's outer edge. It trailed away, ending in a laugh that drifted through the air like an approaching omen. Bashir shuddered at the chill creeping down his back. "Hello?" His voice was subdued, but no less forceful despite its persistently anxious undertone. "Is somebody there?"

Two steps forward, but still he froze once more where he stood - pulse quickening, senses heightened as he strained his eyes to gaze into every formless shadow. His balance faltered slightly with the thundering of his heart, and the dizzying rush of blood now coursing through his brain. His focus was sharp and narrow, like a piercing spotlight that illuminated nothing, and he noticed just as suddenly that the whole of his body had started to tremble.

"This isn't funny," he called - but his throat was tight. Whatever voice he mustered was barely there. He wondered how a textbook would define the fear as it centred in his stomach. _Irrational._ The answer came, entirely unprompted. foundation. Of course his professors had described the physiology behind these autonomic reactions, dryly cataloguing the ways in which the nervous system of a frightened humanoid could feed the terror that it had caused, turning any natural response into an endless, self defeating spiral.

There was only one way to break the chain. Focus. Breathe deeply. Think about anything else but the clammy sweat across his skin, the weakness in his limbs, how small he had become in this lonely, isolated room.

Lightless places all around him, with nowhere left to go, even the comforting solidity of a bench surface, wall, or mattress was already outside of the reach of his hands. Somebody was toying with him - teasing him, as a child with a stick would torment a slow-moving bug. No other person would find them here. Not before this game was played to its conclusion.

"This is growing tiresome." Feeling oddly ridiculous, he noted with some surprise that he had somehow found enough of a voice to challenge the empty air. "Whoever you are, either show yourselves, or go away."

Perhaps he imagined the soft tread of footsteps behind him. Perhaps the shadow at his left was no more substantial than an illusion of shifting light. An arm clamped around his throat, tightening before he could cry out against it. Too late, head already fuzzy and desperate for air, he recognised the cold pressure just below his right ear, and heard the breath of chemicals escaping. Far from imagined had been a touch of fabric against one cheek and the rough, dry pressure of a hand across the lower half of his face.


	12. Journey's Beginning

Larkin had assured them both that Richard's boy would feel no pain - at least, not in the initial, ostensibly less invasive stage of treatments. Perhaps in some strictly literal sense, she had spoken the truth. What the child felt, rising with such force that it overwhelmed all other thoughts within his mind, long after the Adigeons first directed him to lie beneath the claustrophobic restraints and eye-piercing lasers of their DNA scrambling devices… What he felt, above all else, was terror.

A thin wail ascended quickly to a scream as Julian's legs pedalled frantically in the air. Wriggling free of the closest of the hospital staff, who had been unfortunate enough to be first to come within his reach, he tucked himself into a tight, protective ball. Arms and legs locked into sharp, hairpin angles against his body. He backed into a corner, away from the slender hands of the nurse as she attempted to reach out and subdue him, and peered through the narrow gaps of visibility with round, wet, desperately frightened eyes.

"Come now, Julian." One of the Adigeons fought, without much success, to maintain a level, reassuring tone. This particular female - darker in hue than most of her colleagues, with a strangely mottled appearance across the surface of her skin - held out a steady but tentative hand. "There's nothing to fear. Won't take long. And the sooner you come with us, the sooner it will all be over."

"What is it?" Doctor Larkin demanded of another one of her small, moderately bulbous assistants, who brought her closer to the epicentre of the room's surrounding chaos. She strode across the open threshold with long, confident steps, and with the nurse shuffling awkwardly in behind her. Her attentive gaze swept once around the room, and focused almost immediately on the child in the opposite corner.

Tears spilling in rivers over his red and swollen cheeks, head shaking so wildly that his tangled hair fell forward across his eyes, the boy pressed both hands against his knees until the pressure left reddened marks against his skin. His cries pierced that air, as if their sheer volume was the only means left to find him some protection. Richard looked on from the room's edge, away from the focus of the hospital staff. But suddenly, he started. The darker nurse had turned her eyes - in silent desperation - to him.

He could not go forward. The floor gripped his feet, paralysing him, as though a solid wall had risen between himself and the living storm in the room's far corner. Voices from all around had blended to a shapeless cacophony - faces melting to the periphery of sight. All that he heard were the constantly hopeless, despairing cries of his son.

"Would it hurt so much to wait for one more day, or two?" he pleaded, noting that Julian's eyes had sought him out, staring as though at his final source of hope and safety.

"_No monsters here," Amsha had told their three year old son, who hesitated directly outside his bedroom door, and glanced once at the boy's watching father. "What if we all went in together? And we can help you scare them all away."_

The voice of Hilary Larkin was as sharp as the crack of a fire-touched log. "I've already explained this to you, Mr Bashir. We have got to reinforce the alterations to your son's genetic code. To delay even a moment, once we've begun, would be to risk all manner of complications. If we don't start now, then even I won't be able to prevent, or even guess at the consequences."

Richard felt a harsh knot twist deep within his stomach. Confident but wary, with a sharp eye fixed on the child in front of her, Larkin took a determined step towards him. One hand went down to the pocket of her coat.

"It's all right, Jules!" Richard called to his boy. Julian flinched, displaying a mouth full of small, white teeth. He jerked away - once, twice, but the strength of the dark Adigeon was so many times more powerful than his own. _Don't hurt him_! Richard almost shouted. He watched Doctor Larkin make a single quick, sharp movement, a hand reaching towards the panicking child, and all of his struggles abruptly ceased.

Seeing Julian's body drop like a falling puppet, caught up by a pair of slender, mottled arms, Larkin exhaled with relief. "Let's go," she commanded, and replaced the hypospray deep within the pockets of her coat.

Richard could only dodge out of their way as the doctor and her staff bustled into the corridor, guiding a glowing, flat, rectangular antigrav - which floated between them, with Richard's boy stretched like a tattered rag doll along its surface.

* * *

"He's even cuter when he sleeps." A deep, sensual voice invaded the silence, although with less than a metre to travel. There was a controlled, slightly mocking tone behind it. A deliberate, steady rhythm - with hints of a predator calmly assessing its prey.

Bashir's head throbbed. A dry pain spread across his eyes, as of having been scraped away by thorns. Gradually, he became aware of another pain cutting deep into the muscles of his neck. And, yes - there was definitely something different about the unevenly cushioned segments of leather now pressing roughly against his back. Hard. Cramped. And restrictive enough to twist his spine into an uncomfortable curve.

And then, another pair of loud, overlapping voices. "…That showed'm didn't it - hm?"

"But we're not going to get in trouble, are we? I don't want to get into any trouble…"

"Shut up, Patrick."

Bashir groaned. A low, keening sigh escaped him as if at someone else's bidding, as he mumbled something soft and pained. Whatever he had said, even he scarcely comprehended the details.

He had not intended to make a sound. The voices stopped, their course suddenly halted, and he realised that he had begun to squirm - heavy and sluggish, robbing himself of his final chance of feigning sleep.

A face took shape in front of him, obscured for several long seconds by a clear, white glare that burned momentarily at the back of his eyes. But the living shadow continued to linger, close enough for a powerful fragrance to reach him through the short distance set between them.

"_Hello_, Julian." He knew that voice - recognising it well before his unfocused eyes could distinguish the woman's outline from the still fuzzy and increasingly nondescript array of tarnished metal behind her. Framed by a distinct black outline, a pair of large blue eyes were watching him directly. The dark haired woman laughed melodiously at Bashir's waking expression of confusion and vague annoyance. Her lips drew back into a broad crimson grin.

Now, she leaned in close to him, her smile impossibly wide, until she was close enough for a long-fingered hand to brush against his chin. Bashir flinched.

"What have you done with me?"

His voice when he spoke was hoarse and uncertain, as though he was no longer accustomed to its use. He swallowed back a mouthful of nothing, sensing the protests of his stomach after every sudden movement. A challenging glare passed from his eyes, straight to the woman in front of him - even through this residue of still unsettled nausea.

Instead of an answer, he received only a quiet smile, the teasing expression of a woman with a secret to keep. A light of gleeful cunning glinted briefly across the surface of her eyes, as she shifted languorously back and continued to gaze at the face of her captive. And he was a captive, Julian realised. What else could he be? Careful to maintain a vigilant watch on every one of her movements, he widened his attention to include the rest of his surrounds.

The structure around him was clearly artificial, multiple blocks of grey and white locked tightly together with hard, straight seams. Reinforced walls sloped inward at the top, giving way to a ceiling so close that a standing man could have reached up and touched its lower surface. A subliminal vibration emanated from the metal ground, rising steadily upward through his feet, and only lightly touching the air as it went. He supposed it would be missed, if suddenly absent, but even this was scarcely enough to call a truly audible sound. There were only two things he knew from which it could possibly have originated. Either the soft hum of a generator, or the engine of a small and mildly aged ship.

_Then we aren't at the Institute any more_. Bashir wondered what inner notion could have made him so certain. But he had no doubt that they had travelled quite some way already. The silence was thick as a continually expanding cloud, and with nowhere to escape beyond those thickly padded bulkheads.

With more effort than the movement ought to have required of him, he shifted his position and brought both hands up to clutch the sides of his head. He was starting to shiver, cold and fatigued although the air around him bore no obvious chill. _And she knows it_, he thought despairingly. Somehow, he doubted that there was much that he could hide.

The woman's eyes continued to stare. "Well?" she asked him, suggestively. "Did you miss me?"

"_What_?" groaned Julian, shaking his head in spite of himself. "What are you talking about? I don't even… I hardly _know _you."

"Then you weren't thinking of me?" she teased with mock disappointment, but still with a flavour of avarice behind the suggestion. Bashir's involuntary shudder reminded him even more strongly of their initial encounter. "Not even a little?"

"Look." Bashir sighed, and ran a shaking hand once more over his face - entirely unable to find a position that was comfortable. "Just - at least can't you tell me what this is all about. Where… where _am _I?"

"A ship."

This answering voice had not come from the woman in front of him. Startled, Bashir's attention went immediately to its source. A partially closed partition afforded only the narrowest view of anything beyond. But there was enough of an evenly rectangular gap to reveal the movement of two more figures. Previously unseen, but certainly heard. They were Human, he noticed - or as Human in appearance as he had ever been himself.

The older of the two was positioned in the pilot's seat, with a tight fitting suit revealing the shape of a broad and slightly rounded torso. Wisps of thin white hair floated around his head, and he looked on the scene with an expression that alternately fretted, and pleaded. The other man stood with a clearer view, head turned, twisting his back just slightly to allow him to glance over one shoulder. Neither were entirely unfamiliar, and Julian was not at all surprised to see the leader's pale face and dark, piercing eyes.

"We got you away when you were sleeping." Jack let forth one of his most sharply high-pitched, wicked chuckles. "Clever of us, wasn't it?"

_What_? Even the frustration invading Bashir's response was not enough to give his thoughts a recognisably audible shape. As forced as it was, even his voice failed utterly to rise above a low, half mumbled groan. An incomplete curse had snagged against the back of his throat as he rested his head again in both open hands, breathing deeply, and with the same dull, dry ache returning to his over-tired brain.

"Never mind that, either," said Jack from where he stood in front of the dividing partition. "It's just the drug wearing off."

Certain that the weight descending upon him was induced by far more than mere chemical influence, Bashir pressed two fingers hard against his eyes. "What drug?" he demanded, weary exasperation still clouding his response.

"Just a bit of merfadon - nothing so alarming."

"And where did _you _get access to…? No. Wait. I don't want to know."

Although it would never have been at all difficult to guess. _They broke into the medicine cabinet_, he thought. There were times, after all, when the most likely of explanations was indeed the one that made the most sense. _Somehow, they got past Security and overrode the locks_.

"Don't look so worried. It's not like this was the first time." Jack turned back towards his snowy-haired companion, who had remained at the helm. "Can't you do something to make us go faster?"

"Leave him alone," accused the woman, with her painted lips curled into a snarl. She shifted back a little, allowing herself to become a part of their small ensemble. The oldest of them had looked away, anxiously wringing his hands, face twisting as though to herald the approach of oncoming tears.

"All right, then." Bashir wondered, with a brief, tense sigh, why he was not offering more of an argument. He noticed with the passing seconds that his head had begun to shake. What could his efforts accomplish when, in truth, he had little idea of where to find the energy. "So. You've _stolen _a shuttle." He paused, a tight frown adding to the tension ache at both sides of his head. "That's… Very well. But… How far do you think you're likely to get?"

"How far do you think?" challenged Jack, his own eyes gleaming as fervently as two dark stars. "Back to the beginning of course. Isn't that what you've been wanting all along?"


	13. Solidarity

There were more corners, alcoves, uneven angles and hidden passages than Bashir imagined he could have found on a vessel twice the size of this modified cargo carrier. Its interior structure was only passingly familiar, but many aspects seemed to match that of a more typical long-haul freighter. The kind which might take days, weeks - and occasionally, months - to deliver large shipments of stembolts or dilithium between the same two distant worlds.

_Adigeon Prime_… _We're actually going_.

These roughly-fashioned transports very rarely attained or needed such streamlined grace as a commissioned Starfleet vessel. Few had enjoyed the level of engineering care that Starfleet required of its own armada. It was far more common to find them patched together from scavenged, outdated parts, little that was not available for an easy exchange on the outer edges of the Federation.

Bashir had discovered a thinning moss-green blanket, folded into quarters inside a crate of what he assumed were several assorted emergency supplies. A sealed grey-white medkit was tucked into the back right-hand corner - retrievable with effort, but beaten so far out of shape that time and neglect had sealed it permanently closed. His fingers slipped uselessly over the outer casing. He pressed both hands against each other, kneading them roughly, and uttered a low, hissing curse - and abandoned the medical box to its uninterrupted decay.

Why had he not protested more? The same objection had played and replayed through the course of their journey - along with a clearly imagined picture of how those he'd left behind were likely to react once his absence was noticed. Athena Nikos would have discovered almost immediately, and no doubt someone would have notified her superiors. But what else was he to do? Turn the ship around? Retrace his steps back to the Institute, and several more days of continued slow decline?

Neither of his abductors seemed to be according him more than a mild, peripheral interest. But even if he had known a way to take advantage of their inattention, he doubted that he had the strength - and even more, that he could find the will.

Squirming restlessly until the line of his body was pressed against the high, narrow back of the passenger seat, Bashir crouched with arms and legs folded, and shivered from the small, quick chills that passed along his skin. His half-open eyes soon settled on a point halfway down the starboard bulkheads - watching until every scratch on its surface became as familiar as a long time acquaintance.

Too tired to rouse himself to action, too cold and sore to find any comfort in any position, he winced as a slight but ill-considered movement caused the muscles at the base of his neck to seize. And how likely, he wondered, was Nikos to realise or conceal the facts of their escape? Strange that even certain knowledge of the odds could not give him an equally certain answer.

_But then, we're all so exposed. Aren't we_? Like a raft tossed over a stormy ocean, battered by a strengthening wind and smothered by the onset of darkest night. There was no wind between the stars, and one hour's passing was very much like any other. But in its way, a lone starship was even more vulnerable. Even more isolated than that imagined boat at sea.

Still longing to find some warmth from the meagre covering, Julian was unsure of the point when he had started paying attention to the background rise and fall of voices.

There was a belligerence to his companion's words, but also a peculiar sort of improvised choreography. Each combatant knew what part to play, and from which direction their points could most effectively be heard. They argued as dancers danced, stepping over a well-worn floor, backing to the edges for just enough time to allow the next of them a brief advantage. But always, they were quick and sure to reclaim the foreground as soon as the chance was once again theirs. It was a practised ritual, honed with time and long acquaintance, but one which had no ready place for Julian.

So why bring an outsider into their impulsive escapade?

"There. You see?" Jack's persistent tone drew Bashir's attention away, before the question could take hold in his mind. "Told you this would work, didn't I? Told you there was no way they could lock us up forever."

"You did," said his older companion. "I remember."

"Are you sure you keyed in the right heading?" The challenge came from the dark haired woman, whose words were quick to dispel the others' double smiles. Chewing even more fiercely on his fingernails, Jack scowled.

"Of course I'm sure. You saw the figures. Don't deny it. Those were all your calculations too - weren't they? _Lauren_. You were there."

Waiting for a response - and not receiving one - Jack snorted. "And why aren't we going any faster?" he demanded again.

"Patrick already increased the warp plasma efficiency by over fifty four percent." Lauren countered the young man's agitated complaint.

"That's still too slow."

"What if someone comes after us?" It was the rotund older man, seated at the centre of their huddle, glancing anxiously from face to face as he followed their exchange from his place at the helm.

Jack nodded. "Hm. Good point. They still could. They'll catch us up with no problem at all, unless we can get more speed."

"Jack - leave him alone." The woman's reply was steady and even, but with an undercurrent of quiet exasperation. "Patrick. No-one's going to catch us. We aren't even going to a Federation world."

Listening without any obvious attention, Bashir hoped more than he believed that she was right.

* * *

The fifth member of their group was at first only barely visible, shapeless and unfocused in diluted shades of orange, pink and green. Julian shifted, blinking tired eyes, and positioning himself for a better view of the solitary figure.

"I was wondering when I would find you here."

He blinked with dry, unfocused eyes. The edges of his vision sharpened, revealing the other's smooth and softly tacit smile. Sarina's infinitely large, dark eyes had not established contact with Bashir's, but she stayed barely two metres away, maintaining an intently watchful pose. She took a graceful step towards him, as though by some unspoken cue, and settled with little trouble into the vacant space at Julian's side.

A moment of silence passed between them - brief and indefinable, soon to pass the way of every other lost and fleeting memory. The young woman's approach had been almost ghostly with the soundless tread of every footfall. And yet, Bashir found that he was not at all surprised to have seen her appear.

Allowing the sight of her face to hold his attention, Bashir wondered how long she had been watching. There must have been a multitude of hidden places that he had failed to discover in his limited exploration of the passenger hold. Even the corners where shadow had fallen could easily have concealed a lone observer.

He found with curiosity that her company had not given him that degree of alarm, as had that of Jack or the others. "I…" he began uncertainly, his own voice soft and halting. He stopped to gather his scattered thoughts, drew another steadying breath, and began again. "I was hoping to thank you, for… uh… for your help. I know it must have been quite a risk for you."

Sarina's expression barely changed, but Julian was sure that he had noticed the curve of her mouth twitch upwards - a movement so slight that it might very well have only been fancied. When, exactly, had he been so completely robbed of the power to speak?

Small sounds reached them from every direction - filling the inner spaces from one bulkhead to the next. And where Julian knew, he had always felt conspicuously out of place. Perhaps that was why Sarina's arrival had not been unexpected. Seeing her was a final revelation, seeming to complete a hitherto unfinished scene.

He extended his focus to the creak of deck plates - subtle changes in temperature that even the most sensitive environmental regulators in the galaxy would not have been able to alleviate completely. He felt, rather than heard, the slow metronome of his own breathing. But underlying it all were soft-edged variations in the engine's constant and atonal hum.

There were more subtleties to the background noise than even the ears of an engineer would be able to detect. Even Bashir had only barely noticed - not while the constant flow of voices had so commandeered his attention. Many of his former colleagues - captains, engineers, Academy professors - would speak as though their ships were living entities. The warp core, a pulsing heart. The flow of plasma like that of life-sustaining blood. The blink of computer lights, a mathematically exquisite dance…

With a flash of renewed surprise, he looked over to where the others had also fallen silent, as they all had turned to look at Julian, and at the pale young woman beside him. "Well, isn't _this _interesting," Lauren remarked. One corner of her mouth had curved up into a curiously lopsided, mocking smile.

An admonishing glare from Julian's eyes was met with little answer. But he found with surprise that he was neither as angry nor as unsettled as he assumed. Several strands of orange-blonde hair fell lightly across Sarina's pale face, as she stood and departed as quietly as she had first approached. Seeing her alone, Bashir recalled how completely her presence had captivated his attention. He still felt weak and strange, but discovered that - however brief this moment - the tremors in his hands had very nearly stopped.


	14. An Open Contact

The image was lucid in Richard's memory. Chaffing, like the chill of a sudden Winter breeze, and almost holographic in the clarity of sounds and colours. The same dull, twisting pain returned unfailingly to his throat, with each new reminder.

The afternoon had been cool and clear, almost glaringly bright, and barely warmed by the rays of a far-away sun. Richard pulled the front of his roughly woven jacket a little further across his belly as he waited by the outer gate of Julian's school. A semi-intentional gesture, with hands that were pale and cold at the fingertips, and which afforded him scant protection against the biting chill. The fabric was stiff, with thick, dark threads - moderately starchy against the surface of his palms.

The main gate opened to release a stream of enthusiastically shouting children. The first group dashed past Richard, legs pumping like turbines, and missing him by only the merest of fractions. A girl at their front nearly overbalanced on a crack in the pavement, but righted herself with moments to spare and skidded in a sudden anticlockwise arc around the nearest corner.

Julian emerged at the end of this rapidly thinning exodus, in the company of three unfamiliar boys. The steps of these others had slowed and lengthened to match each other, even as they kept only slightly out of pace with those of Richard's son. They glanced back at their smaller, dark-haired shadow, whose halting voice tripped over itself in an attempt to stumble into their conversation. His high-pitched, nervous laughter - quiet, but excited - carried far in the afternoon air.

"Jules!" called Richard, a brief, clear summons.

He took a single step in the direction of the children. Stopping abruptly at the sound of his name, hands knitted together, Julian glanced first at the gathered parents, and then at the faces of his three young companions. Finally, he accelerated to a clumsy half-trot through a gap in the traffic, and closed the remaining distance to be at his father's side.

Only Richard had been in a position to see the trio of boys, now clustered together in a quiet, conspiratorial huddle. One turned to the others, laughing dryly beneath his breath. His friends paused to share the joke, following the boy's example as they joined him in a halting, exaggerated dance. Cruelly aping the awkward gait of Richard and Amsha's only son.

_This_- the father had resolved, his decision finally and irrevocably made. _This _would be the first thing for them to change.

* * *

"Jut three more hours." Lauren's voice was clear and steady. "I told you we could make it."

The question had not left Julian's mind, of what they expected to accomplish by going all that way. But for the moment, he listened. "Not long now," he muttered under his breath - surprised that the prospect was not bringing him any relief. But the time was approaching. He wondered anxiously if any of them had a plan.

"What if we land by the Western Quarter?"

"Too crowded," Lauren countered Jack's eager suggestion. "It's all multistory apartments and observation towers. Nowhere flat enough to land a shuttlecraft."

"Of course there is." Jack pointed to a position on their map, which he and Lauren were regarding intently - while Patrick sat less than a metre away. His eyes tracked the movements of Jack's fingertip. "We can touch down here, beneath this shelter. The Western Quarter has some of the oldest buildings in the system - from even before the Adigeons started replicating their construction materials. Even orbital sensors won't find us through the refractive metals in the stone."

"And what do we do after that?" the woman demanded. "Take the first local entity we meet and ask them they happen to any Human geneticists living in their city?"

"I don't see why not."

Jack had started to pace, as his companions' challenging silence continued to mount - increasingly thick and heavy until he broke it with a quick, frustrated outburst. "Fine! Find me a better idea!"

"I might have something."

The others turned back simultaneously - each as speechless and startled as if the answer had come from one of the cargo containers. Julian swayed a little, clutching the back of a chair for support - but the determination in his eyes was unwavering - always level.

"We need a contact on the surface, don't we? Just let me get to an open Comm. channel, and I can find us one."

* * *

His younger self would never have thought to try anything so deceptive. He had learnt a lot from the past six years - nearly five of those living so close to the Cardassian border. Any attempt to use subspace was to risk detection, but he was determined not to allow any opportunity to pass him by. Perhaps he might have even been excited by the prospect of adventure. Once.

_How ironic_.

"We can scramble the signal on a rotating frequency," he promised his travelling companions. "Redirect an encrypted message through multiple subspace relays. That would take Starfleet longer to trace than it will to communicate. By the time they pinpoint its source, we'll be gone."

His muscles ached, a sharp, strong pain - as though from hard metal clamped to every joint. Columns of bright colour were stacked along the left hand margin of the screen - the illuminated blocks suggesting a monitor that had originally been configured for Starfleet use. _On an obsolete cargo freighter_?

In the Dominion prison camp, Tain had used a complicated encryption algorithm do disguise his transmissions from the Jem'Hadar. The old man had been inexhaustible, Bashir recalled, slowing only after his failing body could no longer support his efforts. It wasn't going to happen again - not this time. Not ever. Stepping clumsily forward, Bashir positioned himself before the screen. The response to his call was far quicker than either of them expected.

"What in Hell…?" O'Brien started to say. "_Julian_? You've got every ship from here to Vulcan on alert for you and your genetically engineered friends."

Bashir jerked away as though dodging a snake. "You know about that?"

"_Everyone _knows about that," insisted O'Brien . His voice tapered to nothing, as the first moments of shock finally began to ease. He leaned forward, eyes narrowed to a concentrated frown. They shifted a fraction, as though trying to peer beyond the limited boundaries of the screen. "You look terrible."

_I don't doubt it_. Bashir pushed the thought impatiently to one side. There was too little time to expend on such a point.

In a moment of self consciousness, he glanced down and cautiously flexed his hands. His knuckles protested, stiff and cold - and increasingly difficult to move. But when he looked up again, the Chief's had changed his expression to one of mild embarrassment.

"Sorry."

Julian shook his head. "Don't be," he insisted through clenched teeth - which he fought to keep from chattering. "It's not… as bad as it looks. I'm… uh - I'm fine. Really."

"Julian-"

He hunched his shoulders like a tired old man and pulled the blanket even closer around them - in a search for the warmth and strong, even pressure that it had once appeared to promise. _End the transmission. End it now_. It was a palpable, demanding thought - as strong as if one of aloud. _There's nothing _you _can do to convince him. _But he pushed it aside. There were things he had to know. And if _anyone _in this universe could be counted on for the information they needed, it had to be Chief O'Brien.

"Please, Miles." Perhaps a quiet appeal, infused with just the right degree of urgency, could silence the other man's protests. "There isn't a lot of time."

"Then shouldn't you begetting back to that Institute place of yours…?"

"No," said Bashir, quietly. He hesitated in the claustrophobic silence, his mind labouring hard enough to bring an ache to the underside of his skull. But with this single word, all indecision vanished. "This could be my last chance. I have to take it."

"Last chance?" his friend demanded. "For what?"

"I…" Bashir shook his head. "Never mind."

"All right." O'Brien sighed, lips pulled back from tightly gritted teeth. "There wasn't a lot, but I'll send you what I can."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet," the engineer cautioned. His brown tensed slightly. "If the files are believable, then your Hilary Larkin'll not be easy to find. As for Naron… Yeah, there was a file. But it was pretty well buried - let's just say, a challenge to get to. And I get the feeling that it was supposed to be much larger."

Bashir was quick to reach the only natural conclusion. A pattern was emerging, gathering but disconnected like the passing of a torch beam through an unlit room. "Deleted?"

"I don't like what's happening here," the Chief said, quietly. "Just so as you know, Julian. You're not the only one who's been making enquiries."

"What do you mean?"

O'Brien watched the screen with a fierce intensity. "There are people on the station," he insisted. "Asking us about where you might have gone. I'm not supposed to tell you any of this. They tell us they're from Starfleet Command, but… I don't know. I don't usually mind keeping secrets, and you know as well as I do - we've had our share of unexpected guests. But this time, it's…"

"…Different," Julian guessed. It was far from Starfleet's habit, for its officers to turn up so unannounced.

Miles O'Brien was ominously silent.

"You don't trust them."

"Can't say for sure," O'Brien answered, with a furtive glance over his shoulder. "Odo's definitely suspicious, and Kira too, I'd say. The captain…? Yeah. I think so. And Dax, but she might just be picking something up from Sisko. He's told us to co-operate with these people, for now, but I don't know that they're giving him a lot of choice. If they say they're from Starfleet Command, and the bigwigs back on Earth aren't telling us anything to deny it - then what can you do?"

He stopped. "Sorry - I don't mean to bring you extra problems…"

"No." Bashir raked a hand through his hair. He had spoken distractedly, his mind already overflowing with a flood of new concerns. But it was sincerely meant, and he could only hope that the ruddy faced engineer knew how much he appreciated the effort. "No. It's all right. Thank you, Chief."

He shivered invisibly, holding back a long, sub-vocal groan, and clenched his hands, gathering the grooves they had created at the blanket's corners.

"We're still keeping our eyes open," promised Miles, unexpectedly cutting through his friend's introspective silence. "And so should you. Watch your back, all right?"

"Don't worry, Miles" There was no cause for evasion or ambiguity in Bashir's response. "I intend to."


	15. Two Moons in a Clouded Sky

Mornings passed to afternoons, and finally into the eerie satin blue of night. Pain was unfurling in Richard's stomach, heightened by degrees with every coming dawn. The quiet, melancholy resignation in the eyes of his child brought an even greater weight to his shoulders than he'd felt when the boy was crying out and struggling. A heavy, mechanical tread had come to Julian's steps as he followed Larkin's assistants along the same extended passage. As though accepting that the daily cycle of tests and treatments was nothing more than what his life was always to become.

"I'll be back in the morning, Jules."

"All right." Julian spoke with a heavy voice, never meeting his father's eyes. Small fingertips pressed shallowly against the fabric of his brown toy bear - which stared accusingly back at Richard, even while his boy did not.

Evening had arrived, the light of two crescent moons casting long beams over the bed and floor. Rising deliberately, Richard shifted his gaze to peer beyond the largest window. The nocturnal sky deeply black, enough to highlight the glow of both thin satellites. Unclouded - for the first time in two full months, if the stories and superstitions of the hospital orderlies were to be believed.

"Father?" whispered Julian, unexpectedly. "We'll be going home soon. Won't we?"

Richard turned again to face his son. "It's possible," he responded. "But that's really up to Doctor Larkin. Not me."

"Then…" The boy paused, swallowing, to steady the quiet half sob behind his voice. "We can go home when she says it's all right?"

"Of course."

"When will she say…?"

Richard hesitated, feeling that his legs had turned to two stone weights. _I don't know_. And one despairing moment had banished all others, with his voice turned dumb by the pain of indecision. It had been made so clear, from the very beginning and even before. They could not stop until the doctor declared that the procedure was complete. But what response would not betray this child, who looked to him as a source of safety in his answers?

"Father…?" Julian ventured plaintively. "That place where we go with Doctor Larkin… sometimes…?"

"Yes?" Richard knew what room he had meant.

His son looked away, and back again. "I don't… I - I don't want to go there any more."

"You don't want to be like the other children?"

There was a pause. "I suppose." But Julian's voice was hushed and resigned. He turned to his side and curled into a ball. "Good night, Father."

By some impulse, Richard stopped moving forward and stood by the open doorway. The sounds now coming from the opposite corner had softened to no more than an occasional sniffle, shrouded by the covers pulled up over the youngster's chin. A barrier extended across the floor, dividing Richard Bashir from the farthest corner of this cool, sparse room. Nothing more than air and moonlight - but it held him back, robbing him of the will to cross.

Beneath the surface, his face was hot - and with tears gathered thinly over the surface of his eyes. The salt stung him like a hundred tiny cuts across his skin. Turning away, he set his aching jaw - and left his son alone in the silver-tinted darkness.

* * *

They chose a patch of bare land on a broad, shallow slope - where the edge of the capital had given way enough to offer a clear but sheltered place to support the mass of a landing spacecraft. It was not the ship that dodged the tip of each artificial structure. But even the shuttle that Patrick and Sarina had located at the back of their ship was bulkier and heavier than any Starfleet runabout. There was a slight vibration as the hull connected with the ground below it, and settled into silence.

"Well?" demanded Jack. "What are we waiting for?"

"The pressure clamps still have to equalise," Lauren reminded him.

Jack fired her a quick, sharp glare. "I know that."

As the locks disconnected with a long, grating hiss, Bashir abandoned his place nearest to the ascending outer door. Hunched in the cramped interior, he took only two halting steps to venture towards it.

He squinted, met by the glare of a hot orange sun. The distorting atmosphere seemed to have augmented more than it had dimmed the light. Dense, slender clouds, drifted in several layered tiers, each one defined at the edges by filaments of sparkling gold. The atmosphere was oppressive - heavy and wet. A noticeable rise in air pressure pushed its way through the doors, the heat of it instantly causing a fine layer of sweat to glisten upon the Humans' skin.

Long banners hung from several balcony columns, drifting sleepily so that the light blinked through the fabric. With the Adigeon sun glowing steadily from just above them, the jagged shadows of their city were as still as though painted onto the sky. Not even a breeze existed to shift the threads of finely woven tapestries.

A paradox, Julian supposed, that the sticky mist around them had seemed to sap all moisture from his breath.

Surveying the cityscape from his place at the transport's entrance, he saw for the first time how many buildings had been gathered like upright sticks within the borders of this shallow valley. His view of the most distant towers was quickly overlaid with a second, long un-accessed memory. The bright and sunbaked planet had seemed a lot larger in the remembrances of his early childhood.

"You realise this is the first place that others will come looking for us?" he commented, still with his back to the shuttle interior.

"What others?"

Glancing over one shoulder, he noticed the sudden anxiety in Patrick's fretful blue eyes. The older man shied away from the door, each hand nervously squeezing the other. Julian sensed that his own mouth had failed to close - but still with no real answer forthcoming.

Lauren regarded him, her eyes narrowed in direct and thoughtful scrutiny. "He doesn't know."

Julian shut his mouth self-consciously, and looked away, turning to adjust his vision to the intense natural glare. "It should not have been so easy," he muttered. They had met no resistance from planetary officials, been given no hint that their approach was being monitored.

"That's gratitude for you," scoffed Jack. One short drop left him standing on the solid ground, where he whirled around, arms spread grandly asunder. "We've come this far. Haven't we?"

Already tiring from the ache in his joints, Bashir clung tightly to the frame of the doorway, and sighed. Perhaps there really was nothing to fear - no more than the illusion of pursuit that had plagued him until he could hardly imagine what it had been like to feel entirely safe. Jack was right. There was no time for doubt.

Lauren's voice came, with little delay. "At least you can find that woman you've been after."

Unable to think of an effective retort, Bashir tracked the woman's approach until she stood close enough for a clear and musky aroma to reach his nostrils. He glanced sidelong at her, skin tingling with their uncomfortable proximity. There was a touch of subtle mockery in her smile, and in the easy curve of her body as she blocked Julian's egress with an arm across the frame of the open door.

"If you ever get tired of looking for _her_-" Daylight flashed across Lauren's steel blue eyes, and her breath was warm and moist as she whispered suggestively in Julian's ear.

She turned, glancing back only once to cast an open smile over her left-hand shoulder. Careful to maintain his balance, Bashir followed the others' lead - and tensed his grip as he negotiated the short descent. For the first time since his childhood, he stood on the ground of this far-off world, and found that he was contemplating the urban jumble of Adigeon's largest city.

_We're here_, he allowed himself to realise - as though it had not been possible before.

* * *

Three men had gathered beneath the flickering glow, as a single outdoor lamp hummed sporadically over their heads. The same light had cast its beams down to a little accessed pavement, in an antiquated Terran suburb that even its neighbours had forgotten long ago. But only one now made his final journey to their distant terminus, beyond even the outer boundaries of the Federation. The others would join him, in time, but not until the circumstance was right. At that moment, they were needed more elsewhere.

A high speed monorail connected the uppermost buildings, like a string extended around a cluster of metal posts. It floated so smoothly above the track, that if there had been any jolts or vibrations, no traveller would have felt them except by the power of imagination. But still, the man's fancies supplied what his senses had denied him. An glimpse of movement as he peered the wide, transparent pane, where a multitude of buildings passed rapidly into the transport's wake.

Many of the locals had shut themselves away in their environmentally regulated chambers, keen to avoid the worst of the midday heat. The scene was still, a briefly tantalising vista - deceptively free of outside life.

And there had been Ulix. The Ferengi captain had proven quite useful. It was a bold decision to include them in the group's careful plans, but not unsatisfactory. They had been curious, acquisitive - occasionally even intrusive in their hunger for information. But theirs was a good ship, and as efficiently managed as the owner had promised. A broad, sharp-toothed leer accompanied every one of Ulix's words - but his loyalty was as good as the gold pressed Latinum that had passed into his hands.

"…Cadmus - you getting this?"

A voice deep inside his ear brought the man's quiet reverie to an abrupt halt. He glanced about him, but saw only five others scattered around the nearly empty carriage. They were all natives of this planet - tall and elegant with delicate, elongated limbs. None of their faces suggested any particular attention. The Adigeons' initial interest had faded quickly, since first discovering an alien in their midst. Or perhaps they were merely unwilling to let him catch their stares.

"What?" he demanded with the same hushed impatience as the message now coming through his implant. Neither of his companions were supposed to be reporting in so soon.

"Cadmus, it's Riley. I'm in position just like you asked, and… I see them. They're here."

Making a show of adjusting his weight, the man brought one hand up to his mouth. "Good." He spoke under his breath, careful not to allow his voice to carry. The small transceiver positioned between his thumb and first two fingers would gather more than enough of his voice for his associates to receive hear and understand. "Remember. Let's have no attempts to initiate contact. And in particular, you are not to be seen. As soon as the targets are in place, report back to me."

He had hoped there would be time to rest, before bringing the plan to its inevitable end. But all he had was a moment to lean forward again, and another to rub a tired, dry ache away from his eyes. Certainly this was not a time for fatigue to betray them.

For a man so used to communicating as much as he wanted with never more than a single glance, words were not usually such a necessity. He found that he had become a stranger to the sound of his own low voice - far more so than to the fluent stream of thoughts within his head. But as with the services of Ulix and his crew, the personal communicators had been a no less sound investment.

Their acquisition had come at the end of yet another difficult - and covert - negotiating process. At times, their ultimate goal had been difficult to keep within his sights. But it was as his father had always said. "You've got to look to the rewards - right, boy? Don't lose that, however far away it seems."

Of course, this had not been the reward that his father had intended him to claim. He could see the old man now, a face that filled his memory and solidified his purpose. Father had meant him for a respectable career - a dull routine surrounded by padds and consoles, in some bureaucratic office with ugly sculptures adorning every wall. He heard the echoes of the old man's voice. "Get down to your study now, boy. Or you'll fall behind. You'll regret it if you do."

It might have been the path for him - that safe, unchanging occupation. If the gruelling study his father had demanded of him had not led the man to a far more urgent calling.

With an abrupt movement, he severed the communication.


	16. The Waiting

"Wait," gasped Bashir.

He had covered only half the distance, stopping at a point where the rock sloped gradually away to a series of crumbling, overlapping steppes. He stumbled at a drop that was barely the height of his ankles, and fell down clumsily to sit upon the ground. One hand slapped against the rock, only fractionally able to prevent the hard, chalky sediments from jarring against his bones.

The weight on his body from this mud-brown planet was only marginally stronger than Earth's. But it was enough to tire Bashir, as he had struggled already to find the power to step unaided away from the shuttle. Breathing hard, he scowled at the path ahead. It was already shifting across his visual field, difficult to focus on the fuzzy images before him. Thoughts turned to the heavy fatigue that weighed down his limbs. He longed to stretch upon the rock, to close his weary eyes.

But not here. To rest could only lead to sleep - and sleep might easy mean that he would never wake again.

He had tried to keep moving, even at the same halting pace, to hold onto whatever momentum he could gather before all remaining energy drained away from his limbs. Once down, the heat and pull of increased gravity had left him dizzy, expanding the pain in his head until he doubted that he could rise. He pressed the persistent ache away with one hand. "Not now," he urged beneath his breath. There wasn't time for him to stop along the way.

Sarina had already turned to glance behind her, long before Julian had been forced to the ground. Her expressive dark eyes looked on in quiet concern. Milky skin, and hair the colour of an Autumn landscape, contrasted dramatically with the brown of the rock and the dark metallic hues of the city behind her. It was in noticing her hesitation that the others stopped as well - still only metres ahead, but with enough distance between them to dilute whatever appearance of a single, unified group they may have once possessed.

Aside from a draft of air, slowly rising to lift some finer strands of hair across Sarina's face, and the uneasy shift in colour and shapes as Julian fought to keep the scene in focus, his travelling companions bore the appearance almost of a frozen holosuite image.

"We aren't about to get anywhere like this," complained Jack.

Even through the slow, blunt pulse of a pressure ache from just behind his eyes, Julian somehow gathered strength from irritability, enough to muster a glare. Clenching both hands against the uneven ground beneath him, he looked away before any significant time had passed. The other man did have a point. A mere ninety seconds, at a brisk walk, and they would have reached the city's edge. If only it had not been so hard to stand.

His body ached to the depths of his bones. Like a weary athlete, after working through the pain of an accelerating heart, the heat that refused to escape from beneath his skin, and the rush of endorphins that allowed them to keep on moving. Just as long as they continued to run. It was when the runner stopped. That was when he would double over, exhaustion mounting past the point of physical endurance.

_This is different_. He should have realised that the ground would not allow him to maintain a sense of balance. But his journey was not even taking him up the hill. It should never have turned out to be so hard.

"Don't tell me you have a better suggestion?" It was Lauren, who crossed her arms as she stared at Jack and tacitly challenged him to speak.

"Could leave _him _behind." Jack sneered, and jerked his head to indicate the place where Julian sat.

There was a moment of silence as the others seemed to contemplate this suggestion.

"It's all right," said Bashir as he shifted his weight so that his feet could push him upright again - as soon as the ground would stop spinning so badly. He had come through much worse than this. "I just need a moment to…"

This time when he fell, the shock of expelled air forced a half-stifled cry from his throat. _Damn _- and he had barely escaped an inch from the rock face, too.

"You see?" Jack's demand was even louder. For a moment, Bashir was startled at the sound - afraid that some phantom observer might be summoned their way.

"He's one of us," came a reminder from Lauren. "You said so yourself, Jack. Wherever we go, we're doing this together."

"Doesn't _act _like one of us." Even Bashir could see that Jack's objections lacked commitment.

"But what should we do?" Patrick had shuffled up the hill, covering the distance to stand beside his taller companions. "We can't go all at once into the city, _and _leave him here. Can we?"

"Wait." Bashir tensed as though from yet another sudden noise. "Perhaps…"

He closed his eyes and rubbed some of the encroaching headache away with the ball of one hand. "Perhaps you can."

Lauren was first to see the real suggestion that lay behind his words. She raised both perfectly shaped dark brows in a moment of interested silence. Then she smiled.

"The ship's transporter?"

Meeting her gaze, Julian nodded.

Now even Patrick's brows had raised in hopeful excitement. "Do you really think it would work?"

"There weren't any on the shuttle," the woman confirmed, smiling. "But I definitely saw something at the far end of that old freighter. If we were to use the shuttle's computer to interface from here…"

"We could beam right in to where we need to be."

Patrick's voice had gathered more enthusiasm, but Jack was far less convinced. "Wait. I thought we already decided _against_ using the transporters. Too risky, that was what you said to _us_."

"Too risky from a higher altitude, perhaps." Lauren silenced further protests with a glance. "There's still a point… oh seven four chance that we might be detected. But our ship is still in orbit, and site to site transports are hardly the same as beaming down from above an atmosphere. Anything has to be better than waiting here all day."

"Oh, brilliant," Jack snapped with venomous sarcasm. "We'll just… _beam _into the middle of a crowded city, hm? That won't attract attention from anyone."

Eyes flashing brightly, he turned his pale faced scowl toward Julian. "Whose idea was it to bring you along, anyway?"

"Yours, Jack. Or have you already forgotten?"

Jack span irritably back in the direction of their shuttle, and waved his hand with a sharp, dismissive hiss - swatting at Lauren's retort as if to dislodge a buzzing insect. "Fine!" He marched purposefully back up the shallow slope. "Fine - use the transporters then. But you'll all regret it in the end. And don't ever say that I didn't tell you so."

Bashir did not see any sign of life in the distant buildings. His recollection of the city's inhabitants was that they almost never ventured into the open at such a time of day - particularly not on this cloud-smothered world. Even now, he sensed the weight of thick, hot air in every breath. And five new arrivals would not have appeared as more than five indistinct, diminutive figures, if the angle of windows in the outer suburbs had allowed any locals to see them at all.

But then… the feeling of unseen observers, of watching eyes at every side, had only been augmented by his companions' abrupt departure. He shuddered.

Slowly, already struggling to connect each ragged thought, he considered what adjustments the others would have to make to contact their orbiting vessel, even through the deliberate interference concealing it from the sensors of official installations. Should it really be taking them so long?

What was there for him to trust in these four near-strangers? He doubted that he could find the strength to enter the capital city alone, but if it should come to that… Blinking to focus through the heat and dimming vision, Bashir forced his head to turn and peer back up to where they had landed the shuttle. It remained where it was, sharply metallic as though a boulder had been dumped onto the most level point of this rocky clearing.

If he could just turn himself around, push himself to a sitting position, and from there perhaps he might still be able to struggle to his feet… If only there were something nearby to lend him balance, or from which he might find the energy to retrace his steps - and be sure that the others had made some degree of progress.

_They've left you here. They've left you here to die_. But what reason had he ever had, to suppose that they would bother to help him any further, once their interest had started to wane?

A familiar sensation was creeping inward from his extremities to his core. The brief but unsettling disorientation of pulling his body apart, dissecting it like a pile of dry leaves in the wind, and spiriting him away to some far distant place. The dim overlay that had clouded his vision of the Adigeon city was obscured still further, transformed to a stream of cool, electric white.


	17. Points of Entry

Finding himself next to the curve of a high cylindrical wall, Bashir turned back to study the smooth white path that spiralled upward from the ground, hugging the tower's edge as if to strangle the life from the structure of stone and metal. "I was hoping we would have been inside by now."

"You never saw the scattering field in place around the complex," explained Lauren. "None of us would have made it through."

"Somebody set it up on purpose," Patrick supplied.

Julian noted the expression of each discontented face, and guessed that his own was not at all dissimilar. _Why bother with a scattering field_? As far as he could tell, there was nothing to warrant such an extreme protective measure.

"There ought to be a lift," he recalled, reaching back into his distant memory "But if we could just find a way inside."

He rested his weight against the exterior of the building, sensing a hard, even pressure on his hands and shoulders, and gazed up as far as his sight would allow. It had seemed a lot steeper, when his legs were much shorter, but his mind lent him vague recollections of a small floating shuttle - one which had carried a father and son to the highest level entrance of the Adigeon's clinic.

So, why weren't the transports still running? With no clear perspective of the uppermost storeys, anticipating another long ascent only sharpened the ache that had forced its way between his joints.

Breaking away from the rest of the group, Patrick waddled in an upward arc - keeping less than half a metre from the tower's outer perimeter. He rested one hand against it and tilted back his head. "There's a door," he announced.

Small, metallic blue, and a full storey above the level of the older man's eyes. "It won't work," said Julian, still too tired for his voice to carry beyond the circle of Human visitors. The day would cool in just a few more hours - and when it did, the people of the city would emerge. Five unauthorised aliens were sure to attract attention. They would not be free of the afternoon crowds for long. Almost certainly, without enough time to find their way through the old hospital's only point of entry.

Lauren's eyes narrowed. "Why not?"

Bashir stared at her, blinking through heavy eyelids, continuing his fight to prevent them from closing entirely. The door to the old hospital was so definitely closed that he found himself wondering when it had ever been opened.

"_How much do you remember from when you were a boy?" Something that O'Brien had said to him, the words coming back as though his friend were speaking through the barrier of time._

"_I'm not sure I…" Bashir leaned back, head shaking - thinking hard. The frown upon his face was quiet and tense, but he had forced his gaze to remain upon the communication screen. They didn't have a lot of time. He would have to break their subspace link before long - before it was detected. But then, he _was _confused._

"_It was hot outside," he managed to recall. "Forty two point seven degrees on the day we left. There weren't a lot of people there, but the ones we saw were… friendly enough. For the most part."_

Because my father had left me alone all night. With those hospital sounds of footsteps and whispered voices, and everything that was happening to me… Too scared even to call out his name.

"_Chief, what are you getting at?"_

"_I think I might have found out why you couldn't get onto the Adigeons' population register," O'Brien explained. "The locals all have a personal code. To get into buildings. Access computers. That sort of thing. The whole system's hooked up to some kind of central interface to stop people from sneaking into places where the planetary officials haven't _authorised _them to be. Pretty sophisticated stuff really. The kind of thing Odo would just _love _to have round here."_

"_How did you know about that?" Now that he thought about it, there was some distant memory - his father may have received, and used, a temporary version of this same eight digit code_.

_O'Brien snorted. "It wasn't easy to find, believe me. But I'm far from sure how much it's likely to help."_

"_You've done plenty, Miles." Silent and thoughtful, Julian shaped his mouth into a heavy smile. "Thank you."_

"Security protocols," he explained to Lauren and the others. "Too tight. They wouldn't let us enter."

Jack snorted. "So? We can bypass whatever locking mechanism they have on their doors. How complicated can it be?"

"Wouldn't get in soon enough to do us any good," Lauren commented, easily translating the thoughts behind Julian's exhausted, half-closed eyes.

_And you can't get up that far. Not any more_. He looked around him to the opposite side of a broad dividing street. _Admit it - you don't have the strength_.

"There." He pointed to a doorway at the other side of the street, smooth in appearance from the position in which he sat, russet in hue, and with sunlight casting diagonal ripples of yellow-orange from the upper left-hand corner. Networks of bridges and covered walkways branched from building to building like the branches of some ancient, tangled tree. Unusual, he thought, to find another entry point so close to level ground. But if the Chief's information had told him true…

"You see that other building, with the red door? We might be able to get through there. Ask for directions."

He gripped the nearest solid surface with the fingertips of his tense right hand, and clenched it against the sharp, pocked, scratchy edge of the wall. "Help me… Help me up."

* * *

It was a trick that he had learned from simple experience - from several others, on several different occasions. At times he had even been grateful to the intruder, such as the Maquis operative who had helped them free Miles from that Cardassian prison. But more recent break-ins, he recalled, had only led to trouble. This would not.

With the lights down almost to nothing, he and his companions could remain entirely invisible - until the moment when they chose to be revealed. In the darkened room, back-up systems cast dim pools of colour over walls and other surfaces. Each reflected glow was weaker than a whisper.

There had been other things to do of course. Disable the lighting controls so that only a command from Patrick could bring them back online; create an electromagnetic field around the immediate vicinity that would render scanners temporarily useless… "What sort of people put more security on their doors than on their primary system controls?" Jack had wondered aloud. But nothing they did would have any effect beyond this room.

Bashir and the others had found the room empty, but the door itself had yielded surprisingly easily to their efforts. It was not like the higher storeys. Few of the locals ventured so close to the ground, except on festival days. Few would have bothered with this room - but the name of one resounded hopefully in Julian's memory.

Jack had sworn that this was the darkest corner in the small and moderately cluttered space. _And this has to work_, thought Julian. He shivered, focusing hard to keep whatever detail he could within his sights, struggling to believe that it was a drop in the temperature that had caused his teeth to chatter. The indoor environment had been a relief, at first. But environmental systems were too inextricably connected to the lighting controls, and Julian had already begun to sense a chill in the air.

"Let me do the talking," he whispered instinctively. He looked back at the faces of his companions. Sarina's was closest, the first to draw Julian's attention. Her own gaze had shifted towards him, distracted - but with the same keen air of observation as when she had been studying the detail of the nearest walls.

"Why?" Jack's eyes flashed with a darkly piercing scowl. "So you can go off on your own, not have to share the credit with any of us?"

"This has nothing to do with credit." Was that exasperation Bashir had sensed in his own voice? Bone-deep exhaustion? Or both?

Jack's response was sharp and demanding. "Then what, hm? _Hm_?"

"Quiet." insisted Lauren.

Last to hear what had prompted her call for taciturnity, Bashir withdrew to where his companions were hidden in the darkness. A tiny sound from beyond the doors preceded their opening, with a soft buzz of artificial light coming inward from the hall. Somebody else was entering the room.

The figure stopped in front of the vanishing outer lights, visible only by the slight, rhythmic flicker of respiration, and by the movement of his large, oil-black eyes as he took a moment to survey the darkness before him. _No tricorder_, noted Bashir. Whatever equipment the stranger carried remained tucked closely into the belt at his waist. As if he knew already that it would not be of any use.

Meagre light passing like a skimmer over the contours of his skin and clothes, the tall Adigeon strode towards the largest of four main consoles. The glow of its screen half illuminated his profile as a pair of thin, pale white hands tapped uselessly at its controls.

Still following the shadows with one hand raised to assure himself of the presence of supporting furniture, Bashir stepped into the open.

"Don't move," he told the office's other occupant. "We're not here to hurt you, or steal from you. We can bring the lights back up at any time. But before we do, I need for you to promise. Don't tell any others that you saw us here. At least, not yet."

"Very well," said the stranger, with only the barest flicker of hesitation. "I give you my word."

The sound of computers invaded the silence, until this too was interrupted by a whispered query from Patrick. "Can we get the lights back now?"

_Oh. Yes - the lights_…

Bashir could find no remaining objections to the idea, but still he paused before finally breaking away from a lapse in concentration. Carefully adjusting his balance, gripping with his toes even though he knew this would make little difference if he should slip, he nodded. He stepped forward slowly as the surrounding space returned to a level of illumination only slightly dimmer than the outside gleam of sunshine.

"Humans." The half-whispered acknowledgment gave no sign of surprise. "How have I convinced you that my promise will be kept?"

"Because I understand what promises mean to your people." This man would not break his word. Once given, even a Klingon was not so tightly bound by such an oath.

They were as delicate as he remembered, these Adigeons. This man's limbs were thin and elongated, every joint sharply visible beneath his pale, tight skin. Inky lines branched across the length of his body. A web of veins seemed to slide over his arms and legs - only mildly obscured by the translucent epidermal layer stretched across their surface.

"Are you Naron?"

Whatever colour was in the man's pale face had shifted towards a shade of yellow-white, as he turned and stepped around, until he was directly facing the alien intruders. He stepped forward again, black eyes watching the face of his guest. This much, Bashir had never forgotten. The eyes of the planet's natives were hugely dark, and almost constantly gleaming with a film of sticky moisture.

The man had stopped as though waiting for his visitor to recognise some undetermined non-verbal cue. Whatever answer there had been to see was either beyond the visible spectrum, or too slight for detection by Human eyes.

Finally ending the journey towards a decisive resolution, the Adigeon spoke. "Yes."


	18. Matter of Persuasion

"You are looking for someone?"

"I…" Bashir glanced back at the faces of his companions - suddenly no more certain of how he should answer, and finding nothing helpful in their stares. He reached for the most obvious response, as though searching for a dropped writing stylus with his eyes tightly closed. "Yes."

"Another Human like yourselves. You wish to enter the old hospital."

Although inhumanly thin, he was quick to notice, Naron's elongated form was only marginally taller than his own. The pigmentation of his skin had changed again - this time to a calm, moonlight silver-blue. Had those round, black eyes already noted the hunch of the other man's shoulders, or the soft-voiced gasp that accompanied his words? Or were Humans just as unreadable to the planet's dark-eyed natives?

"I have some influence with Civic Security," he was explaining in a soft, inflectionless voice. "It is my business to notice certain details, which others might prefer to overlook."

The cadence of his speech, the long, measured stare, the utter certainty with which his words were spoken… Naron's voice was noticeably smoother than Odo's gravely tone, but Julian could not escape the reminder of Deep Space Nine's shapeshifting constable.

"A Security officer?" he asked.

"In one sense. Yes."

"He's up to something," Jack hissed in Julian's ear. Patrick nodded in agreement.

"That's right, Jack. We'd better be careful."

"You need not worry," the pale Adigeon assured them all. "I have sworn to hear you what you have to say, without revealing your presence to my superiors. And it is as you have already reminded me. My people keep our promises. Clearly you have succeeded in finding me here, so you must at the very least have already learnt my name. You sought me directly - so I can only assume that there is a purpose to this visit."

A shock ran all the way through the nerves of Julian's body. He blinked, startled, grasping futilely for an answer, and rejecting every possibility as immediately as it came to him.

"Do you believe that finding this one Human will make a difference?"

"It _has _to." Surprised at the sudden fervour behind his exclamation, Julian paused a moment to calm his agitated nerves and still trembling hands.

"Told you," persisted Jack. "I _told _you so, didn't I? Can't trust every person that you meet."

Bashir ignored him. "We just need a way through the door. If you don't want us to bother you after today, then _I_ promise you we won't."

Naron's attention flicked momentarily to the two other men. "There is a protocol," he continued unimpeded by the risk of further interruptions. "A code that allows us entry to the higher levels."

"Yes - we know about that."

The dark eyed, impenetrable stare returned immediately to Bashir. The Security officer's colouring had changed again - pale skin now infused with a suggestion of peculiar yellow-green. _The colour of surprise_? Julian wondered.

"Come with me," said Naron, after a pause. "Just you. Alone."

Julian hesitated.

But Naron remained persistent. "It is a condition of my assisting you in this matter. There are certain points I need to verify - and for that, we must be alone. If it helps, I will make you another promise that there will not be any unsolicited consequences."

What choice did he have? With one tightly clenched hand, Bashir rubbed at the side of his skull, sensing the stares of all his travelling companions. They were waiting - like children at a pantomime. Waiting to see what decision he would make.

He nodded, sighing, aching to the depth of his bones. "Very well."

"Go right ahead," Jack shouted after their retreat from the office's main compartment. "Don't mind us. We'll just sit here and _wait_."

* * *

"Am I correct in assuming that you have visited our world before?"

Bashir opened his mouth, preparing to give the same automatic denial. It had become so instinctive, repeated so often in his head that the course of years had turned secrets to reflexes. Ever since his initial, fateful discovery that there were secrets to keep. His prodigious memory still held to the moment of stomach-clenching shock - and a decision borne of fear, that had left him complicit in his parents' decision.

But these secrets were no longer his to conceal. "Yes," he confessed, a little reluctantly. "A long time ago."

"…Which would explain why you chose to return to this world, in particular." Naron did not elaborate on his reasoning. "But the other Humans - the ones who travel with you. They have not."

_Of course_, thought Bashir. _He wasn't surprised to see us_. Naron was Doctor Nikos' Adigeon contact. He had to have been among the first she would have contacted, when he and the other inmates had vanished from the Institute. It was ridiculous, to suppose that their visit would not have been anticipated.

"You were expecting us."

"I was told to wait for your arrival," Naron confirmed. "An unidentified informant."

"But I thought… Wouldn't Doctor Nikos have…?"

"No. She said nothing."

The floor lost a little more of its solidity, and yet, Bashir did not stagger. Not visibly. The information could still have come from another member of the Institute staff, but surely they would have given their names - and the same had to be true of Starfleet. Or at least, any reputable Starfleet officer. Then, who else would be leaving anonymous tips…?

It would have to wait.

"Why did you come here?" Naron continued. "It might have been a lot safer for you to remain with the Federation."

"Safer? Perhaps," Bashir responded. He looked up, struggling to find some appropriate words to voice his conflicted thoughts. "People assume so much about the genetically enhanced. That they… That we are always so antisocial, or dangerous. That we have to be controlled, and that includes not _allowing _us to make the usual human mistakes. I've never been immune to making a bad decision or two. But coming here, to this planet - this is not one of them. Agreeing to let the others send me to the Institute - that was. One thing's certain. I never belonged there."

"What makes you so sure?"

Bashir's frown turned to one of bewildered perplexity. Was it not obvious?

"I'm not like the others," he insisted, wondering that the other man showed little reaction to the agitation in his voice. But of course, Naron would have no more idea of Human expressions than his visitor could gather of Adigeons'. "They all experienced unintended side effects from their genetic re-sequencing. I…"

He glanced down, clenching and unclenching his hands, watching as they continued their uncontrolled shaking. Slapping one palm against the nearest wall, he eased himself sideways into a corner and wrapped both arms around his chest. His carefully managed control had wavered, even the level ground of Naron's office precariously unsteady. All arguments had vanished into the cool, environmentally regulated air.

_Don't let him see_. Concentrating on each forward step, trying not to appear off balance, Bashir moved himself closer to Naron's position. "You must know something about the old hospital. Your world was involved for so long in genetic research and manipulation."

"I am not an historian."

"But then, why would anybody from Starfleet Medical have wanted to contact you unless…?"

"The Starfleet woman thought that we might have knowledge of another Human doctor, one who would no longer practise in the Federation, but who had been residing here for quite some time."

Then Athena had not stopped looking after all. Julian's heart beat a little faster. "And, did you?"

"We have not seen any other Humans since those at the old hospital went into hiding."

"Hiding?" demanded Bashir. "There _is _still something to find on this planet - isn't there?"

"It's possible," responded the Adigeon, limbs shifting fluently as he moved a little towards the narrow chamber's edge. But whatever hope he had imagined in the voice, Bashir was certain was equally attributable to his own desperation as to any degree of truth.

"Listen," he confessed. One more plea was all he had. "This is the last place I would come to if there was any alternative, but I don't have a lot of time. You must understand how urgent this is. If there's even a chance - an old datafile, or somebody in the building who might know more than Starfleet, I… I have to _try_…" He stopped, hugging his arms and trembling all over. When he spoke, it was so quietly that he could scarcely even conjure a voice.

"I have to try."


	19. To Gain a Pass Key

A picture was spreading outwards, so quickly that it seemed to expand like the advance of spilled water across the low, flat bench. Pieces of a jigsaw were connected with a steady, fluent rhythm, set in place by a childish hand, while Doctor Larkin watched and nodded quietly to herself. The first hint of a satisfied smile had already touched the corners of her mouth.

Julian was mumbling to himself in a subdued and childish voice, words obscure, but with the steady tempo of a memorised chant. He barely heeded the woman's presence at his side, content instead to discover the patterns that were taking shape on the polished tabletop - just as they had been inside his head.

This was unusual, his father recalled. In success and in failure, Julian rarely allowed himself to risk taking on a new endeavour without first glancing up at the nearest adult, to confirm that he would find approval in their eyes. The perspective of the remotely accessed image was mildly awkward, viewed from a downward angle on a standing screen that covered over half of the nearest wall. Its scope was broad, but only partially revealed the downcast faces of doctor and child in the neighbouring room.

Extraneous observers were a distraction, particularly if their presence served to make a six year old subject nervous. Quietly patient, the round-faced doctor had clearly outlined the reason why such measures were necessary - but offered this compromise when she saw him regarding her closely, with open doubt in his wide, dark eyes.

"What were you reciting, Jules?" asked Larkin, direct and probing.

The boy looked up. "Nothing."

Nobody else could be present for this mid-morning session, Hilary Larkin had explained to Richard in a calm but persistent voice. Not the nurses, technicians, consultants, or any of the hospital's other staff. And most particularly, not Julian's father. These tests were as important as their daily follow-up scans. "_No more scanning for a short while yet. But this is easily as necessary as any medical test, especially to determine if we have successfully improved his cognitive abilities_…"

"I have something here for you." Larkin held up a bulky padd with saturated tones of black and orange alternating around its border, like the stripes of a storybook tiger. Richard could not see what image it revealed, but he found that Julian had stopped, looking back with a touch of trepidation coming quickly to his eyes.

Hilary Larkin noticed it too. "It won't take long," she promised. "We can return to your puzzle as soon as we're done."

Sighing resignedly, Julian padded over to a smaller table in the corner. Larkin folded her legs into a crouch as she sat in the other of two child-sized chairs. "All right then." She showed the screen to the young boy sitting opposite. "Have a look at these shapes here. Which do you think would go best together?"

"That one." Julian poked the screen, twice. "And there. They started with the same shape - just folded in a different way."

"Very good," said Larkin, as the padd emitted a distinctive, bitonal chime.

Looking pleased, she tapped another command and turned the padd around to reveal a second set of images. Julian's response to every challenge was lightening quick, although with scant indication of any real interest. "Twelve out of twelve." Larkin sounded impressed, and Richard permitted his back to straighten, adopting a quietly satisfied smile. "Perhaps we ought to take it up another level."

Julian stared pensively downward and chewed his lower lip, focusing his attention on the activity of his own small hands as Larkin endeavoured to programme new instructions into her padd. The surge of pride that had fuelled his father's smile was just as immediately tempered by a rush of quiet concern.

_Something's not right_.

He noted that his son's right index finger had begun to trace a path over a jagged crack on the table in front of him. "Father said…" he began.

"Said what?" Even Doctor Larkin's efforts had gradually slowed, and halted. She set the padd face down across her knees. "You can tell me, Jules. What did he say?"

Julian's reply was soft and faltering. "He said that you would tell us when it's time to leave," he ventured, hopefully. "Is… Is that soon?"

"It depends on how your tests go." At least the woman was honest. "I wouldn't want to make any promises."

Nodding quietly, Julian wiped a sleeve across his eyes.

"When you're older-" Larkin continued. "You'll probably be glad that we saw your treatments through to the end. And you managed to do that puzzle just fine, and all of these other tests. Isn't everything so much easier now?"

"I guess…" But to Richard's ears, the answer sounded a little too forced - a little _too _brave.

"Well, if not, then why do _you _think we're doing all of this?"

"Father told you to," Julian began in a small, trembling voice. He bowed his head and continued to pluck fragments of lint from his loose white gown. But his face was clear on the surveillance screen, separated from Richard as if by no more than the pane of a clear aluminium window.

"He brought me here because he didn't like me any more."

* * *

"That's not it!" Patrick's voice was rising to a whine as Naron led Bashir on their return to his principle office. "No, Jack - you're doing it wrong."

Entirely unfazed by their reappearance in the doorway, three of Julian's party had clustered at one of the terminal screens, where Jack was jabbing with increasing frustration at the unresponsive interface. Sarina stood apart and trailed a hand along the raised edge of the same curving desk. She kept her eyes averted, revealing little of the thoughts behind them. But she had stopped as the door opened to allow the pair to enter.

"He's right, you know," confirmed Lauren. "You have to set up an adaptive algorithm before you can decipher that…"

"Will you get _off_?"

The memory of Jack's impulsive demand echoed and faded in the now-silent room.

"You may still _ask _how to access our security protocols." Could there have even been a touch of amusement in Naron's response? Bashir fancied so, even as he hesitated less than a metre from the entrance. Was he finally accustoming himself to the nuances of Adigeon expressions? Or was that, like many things, no more than the vagrancies of his own imagination, attempting to make connections where none existed?

"I can give you the means to get inside, once you reach your destination." Naron spoke directly to him, although he had adopted a sidelong stance to keep the other off-worlders within his sight. "But that is as far as my authority extends. I still have duties to perform, commitments which I cannot fail to meet. To do so would doubtless attract the attention of my superiors. I will not be able to accompany you to journey's end."

"I say we _make _him come with us," insisted Jack. "Unless we want the whole planet to know that we were here."

Naron turned calmly to face him. "I gave my word."

"Whatever _that's _worth."

Bashir reached up with a shaking hand, to clutch his stomach where it had long since started to ache. The pain was making him dizzy. Tentatively, he extended his other arm until his fingertips brushed against the wall behind him. He knew - he _knew _- what promises meant on this world. His voice was soft, with little support, but it did not fail him. "Then, there _is _something you can…?"

"Move aside," Naron told Jack as he moved to displace the three at his main office console. Lauren smiled to see him so close, briefly passing her own gaze up and down the pale Adigeon. But Jack's scowl of irritation was as dark as his eyes. For a moment, though, he gave no further challenges.

"I trust that every one of you is already committing this pass-key to memory," said the pale Security man as he tapped a sequence of controls - each with a distinctly different tone in the otherwise silent air. A weak yellow beam issued forth from the computer panel to sweep over his semi-translucent, off-white skin. And as this faded, more lights began to swirl in a complex, mathematically meticulous pattern within a shallow compartment at his side.

They were coalescing, Bashir realised. Transforming themselves to a solid mass which the angle of the desk was not permitting him to see.

"This holds the code."

Patrick leaned forward, eager curiosity in his eyes, as the Adigeon reached inside. But Bashir frowned dubiously at the object in Naron's slender, knobbled hand. "A hypospray?"

"The process is quite simple," the other man explained, ignoring the frown upon the oldest Human's brow. "It introduces a precise sequence of amino acids into your blood, encoded to interact with our scanners in a very specific manner. These are the codes that our security systems detect, once the data is gathered, of course. I promise, there is very little risk of harm."

Bashir raised his eyebrows, oddly intrigued. His mind had been slow to register the implications of Naron's words. Slower than he thought it should have been. But he was sure he'd read something about… Spies used similar devices on occasion, didn't they? As a means to encode the secrets they had stolen. When would such specialised technology have been introduced to this hot, cloud-smothered world?

"…And use it to track our movements, I suppose," Jack demanded loudly. "Hm? That's _exactly _what they'll do."

When he finally responded, Naron's naturally low, husky voice had dropped to a hiss - barely reaching even the artificially enhanced perception of his visitors. "If it would lessen your anxiety-" His speech had accelerated noticeably, losing its level, regular cadence for the first time since the Humans' arrival. "Place the contents through a chemical analysis. Otherwise, trust me. Or turn back. There are no other options open to you."


	20. This Way for Journey's End

With only the briefest of glances over his shoulder, the tall, willowy Adigeon strode fluently to a previously unnoticed door at the very back of the room. Light from a distant corner cast his body in diffuse shadows, where this exit had been more than half concealed behind two other waist-high desks. "Now," he said. "The time will come for us to part company. We must go."

"Go?" Bashir stood precariously with his hand connected to the nearest available surface. But he held himself back to watch the taller man, with a mildly suspicious air.

Naron, too, was quiet for long enough to see that his other visitors were equally dubious. "At the end of this corridor is an open turbo lift," he explained. "It isn't far, and my authority should be high enough to get you to the entrance to the old hospital. This will be very much faster than if you attempt to walk the distance. Assuming that I programme it to the correct internal co-ordinates, you can be there in under two minutes - certainly within the time that you would need. Am I correct?"

"I hope so," muttered Bashir.

Three distinct segments of corridor had joined together like elongated vertebrae, connecting the room's back exit to a second row of darkly painted doors. It was to the smallest of these that Naron was starting to direct his guests in the seconds after leaving his office behind. Even the most basic calculations were enough to render this a certainty.

Bashir soon discovered that the navy blue lines at the border of each dividing section were turning quickly to milestones, as his legs struggled with determination to cover the distance. He kept to the corridor's edge, moving forward in cautious silence while the others had all strode far ahead.

Naron looked back, finding that Julian had started to lag behind. "Are you quite well?" he asked in his soft, indecipherably level voice. "Perhaps it is better, if you were to stop until tomorrow,"

_But if I stop now, I might never keep going_, thought Bashir. He shook his head. "It's fine." There wasn't time to dwell upon the truth. Already his voice was fringed with shallow gasps.

"You - you said so, yourself. It isn't far."

Emotions were still as difficult to detect in the Adigeon's eyes, but it was equally hard not to catch the swift but doubtful glances on the faces of the other Humans. "Very well," conceded Naron. "You will come to the end of your journey - just as long as you remember my instructions."

* * *

With a sharp, outward sigh through his teeth, Julian was grateful to find a rail extending around the turbolift interior and less than twenty centimetres below the level of his waist. "It's all right," he muttered - an exhausted, voiceless whisper - but half fell against the wall, grunting softly as hard metal collided with his hip. He discovered with some surprise that his throat had let forth an ironic, near-silent chuckle.

It had taken all his energy while in Naron's office to maintain some pretence at normalcy - and even now the strength of his hands was all that kept him from falling back again. But it had worked, he insisted to himself. Finally. There _was _some hope for him. There had to be.

Sarina stood at Julian's side, dark eyes quiet and questioning. And yet, he concentrated again to regain his veneer of stubborn-edged tenacity. The time had not yet come to let himself relax, no matter how sorely he wished that it would. Surrendering himself to the motion of their speeding capsule, he barely held back a flush of anticipation. However weary he felt at that moment - however close to some undetermined point of no return - this road they had taken did have an end.

Even the mildly claustrophobic presence of his companions gave some relief to what would otherwise have been an exhaustingly solitary journey. Distantly, he wondered again why they still accompanied him. Perhaps this would be his chance to ask, with Naron gone and with no immediate need to force his own steps forward. But something in his throat kept back the query. Nobody was affording him any particular notice. Even whatever responses he could yield were unlikely to be entirely truthful, and he lacked the energy to concern himself with possible answers. In any case, he was secretly glad not to be travelling alone.

_Correction_, he reminded himself. He would not have come this far at all without their help.

Jack's harsh voice was first to cut through this tacit impasse. "No - _no_. This isn't right. It can't have been so easy."

"Strangely enough," said Bashir. "I agree."

Reflected light from beyond their moving chamber lent an even sharper quality to the manic irritation in the other man's brown eyes. A moment of hostility flared behind them to solidify into an acutely piercing scowl.

"Not used to having no-one to argue with, are you Jack?" Lauren teased.

Julian hardly noticed as the pale young man redirected his accusatory gaze. It was Sarina's expression that drew him away from the Jack and Lauren's mutual challenge. She was not looking directly at any part of the almost featureless walls, nor at the others standing so close by, but even her silence held an undertone of curious intensity. As if to demand answers to some unasked question, that could only be found in the depths of her eyes.

"What is it, Sarina?" Julian found that he was asking, almost as softly.

"She wants to be sure that you've considered what else this _Naron _might have been thinking," Lauren translated, glancing sidelong at the smaller young woman. "And why you believe his claims." Julian was struck once more by the intuition that nothing escaped the perceptive glances of those quiet, dark eyes. "And what plans we have made for if his promises all turn out to be false."

"Is Sarina the one asking those questions, or is it you?" muttered Bashir.

Jack rounded on him. "She _can _hear you, you know."

Feeling heavier than even the moment of sudden regret could explain, Bashir secretly fingered the hypo in his jacket - the same that contained the Adigeons' security codes. He clenched his other hand even more tightly around the supporting rail. "Sorry," he whispered, discovering as he did that his apology was sincere although he doubted that anything he said would ever have surprised his present companions. "The truth is, I… I don't know."

Strange, to have admitted it aloud. He frowned again through a rising headache, and rubbed the skin of his brow. His hand was numb, and tingled at the fingertips as though from a loss of circulating blood.

"You know he's planning to contact his friends," Jack persisted. "Could see it in his eyes, couldn't you? All those glances he was stealing at that computer of his."

"But he did help us get this far." It was a feeble assertion. And there was still another nagging thought that had still gone unexpressed. Naron had been told that Bashir and the others would be coming to Adigeon. He had been _told_…

_But I'm taking his word, for the same reason that I've followed all of you this way_. _He's given us no reason _not _to trust him. At least, not yet_…

No. There had to be a simpler explanation. And certainly, his true incentives were not as objective as Julian wished he could believe. With effort, he pushed his voice forth, forced his lips to shape themselves around still-recognisable words. "You always had another choice," he confessed. "But I don't see any for myself. Do you?"

Now as he spoke, he sensed a change in the rhythm of the turbolift. It was slowing, steadily rocking the bodies of those within as their ride came to a gradual halt.

* * *

Bashir surveyed the stronghold before him, feeling a knot twist deep inside his stomach. His ears still sensed the after-effects of movement even after stepping away from the turbolift and onto a solid floor. He winced at the sight of a smooth, high wall, where not even colours differentiated it from the narrow indentation which was all to suggest a forbiddingly impassable barrier across this entrance. There were no borders of alternate panels, no levers, comm-screens, or even a scratch upon the smooth, blank plane.

"Perhaps they're all too busy to know that we're here," he suggested, more than half to himself - although with little real conviction for anyone beside him to challenge.

The complex had seemed a lot bigger when he was a child, the upper half of this doorway almost entirely beyond the level of his eyes. They must have already opened, allowing the six year old Julian's father to lead him straight through without any trouble at all. But the doctors had been expecting new arrivals, back when Jules Bashir was a much younger boy. Now a grown man, he touched the hard barrier with the palm of one hand, and followed the corridor for two and a half metres, listening hard for the fainter signs of occupation. The doors gave no more response to his efforts at contact than they had to anybody else's.

"Where's that toy that Naron gave you?" Lauren spoke confidently, suggestively, turning to smile in his direction. Bashir found that he had been startled by her voice, residual shock taking several long moments to settle.

_Of course_.

"My pocket…" Tucking his fingers inside, he curled them around the black and silver hypo. For a moment, he stared at the patterns along its surface, realising quickly that he was having to concentrate to keep it from slipping through his fingers. Any associated danger, he felt, still ought to be his to take. There had been no suggestion of anything dangerous floating inside the thick, clear fluid at its centre. But he had no wish to risk the good health of anybody else.

"Well?" demanded Jack. "What are you waiting for - hm, hm?"

_Focus_, Bashir commanded his trembling right hand. He brought the substance closer to his upper arm, easily locating where his veins had dilated slightly with the heat of day. He felt the mild chill as it connected with his skin, heard the hiss of chemicals, but sensed no immediate rise in pain levels, or difficulty breathing. And no more trouble maintaining his balance than he had already felt for days.

Some of the wary tension - he noticed - had even been released from his knotted muscles, as doubts were relieved that he had scarcely realised he still carried.

The light of the security scanner was warm across his skin, coming from where a section of the wall had turned transparent, enough to reveal a single mechanical eye. He was still a little uneasy, bothered that nobody had answered the initial chime. But once they were inside, there might be a greater chance of attracting someone's attention. Perhaps he had been right. Perhaps they were all busy…

And if he could not, at least Jack did not appear to be as easy to ignore.

Something clicked beyond their sight, and a second later, the doors were open. One arm extended to encompass the width of the entrance, Lauren matched the line of her body to that of its arching frame. "No doctors here," she commented with an air of finality.

She and Bashir were last to step inside behind the remainder of their group. They had come to no more than another silent, empty corridor. "Are you sure this is the right place?" asked Patrick, nervously.

"What else would it be?" Jack snapped over his shoulder.

But Julian said nothing, his throat too tight to allow him even the first tiny semblance of a voice, his stomach turned leaden as it sank towards the ground. Lauren was right, he was quick to realise. The corridor before them was dusty and abandoned, equipment covered with old sheets like a child's impression of a ghost on Halloween.

Was this what had held him back all along? Not any limits that Athena Nikos had imposed. Not even the obstacles presented by the Adigeons' security measures. But the thought that arriving here might finally extinguish the last remaining hope that he possessed.


	21. The Old Hospital

"I remember," whispered Bashir with a cold, uneasy shudder. But the corridors returned only a ghostly, ambience of age and neglect. At least once - or, more likely, on several occasions - their surfaces had been painted over by diligent hands, which had then long ago left their endeavours to fade, and turn archaically brown at the corners. Twenty six years, it had been. And yet, not since landing had his early memories been so clearly intermingled with his view of the rooms and passages beyond their initial entrance.

_There_, he thought with a jolt of recognition. The largest room, second from the door… That had been the office, where he and his father had met the gen-engineers, all of them destined to end whatever natural course his life might have known.

Which meant that Julian's old room… Halfway along _that _corridor. Almost precisely forty degrees to his left. And at the end of a longer, narrower hallway had been that low-ceilinged clinic - barely high enough for the Adigeon nurses to stand. A table had stood at its centre, parallel to the walls once lined with abominators, digitally regulated nano-manipulators, and every variety of looming mechanical device.

As his younger self's cognitive functions had steadily improved, and curiosity finally drove him to ask, he had come to learn what each device was meant to do. But his childish recollections were still inhabited by cold, metallic alloy monsters, with eyes of glowing yellow, skeletal foundations and hard, protruding edges and limbs.

_Twenty six years_… In spite of the planet's natural heat, which was barely lessened in this unconditioned maze, Julian felt the chill of gooseflesh creep across his skin. He felt haunted. Time alone was what now stopped the ghosts of his past from drifting like cobwebs through these halls. Time alone separated him from the stares of who knew how many children, waiting for the time when they too would be gradually and irrevocably changed.

Surging ahead with long, fast strides, Jack continued to peer through every tarnished window. "No," he remarked at every one he passed. "No. Not here either." He spared no regard for Patrick's continued plaintive calls as the old man hurried to rejoin him, his voice echoing in the unseen distance.

"Wait for _us_, Jack."

With every clouded windowpane that his companions discounted, the small but hopeful flame that Julian had imagined glowing deep inside of him was dimmed to a cold, brittle cinder. Its absence left a hollow at the depth of his already aching chest. Lauren was right. This was no hospital, but a place so long neglected that cracks had spread across the walls, and fragments of rubble had started to gather like crumbs swept into empty corners.

"Still, it's a curious place…" the tall brunette muttered to herself. Her deep, low voice was soft and lingering. Following barely two metres behind her, only Sarina paused to glance over her shoulder. A brief apology came from behind her dark brown eyes, before she too disappeared around the same long corridor as the others.

There's nobody here. No-one had frequented these corridors for a very long time - possibly even years. Bashir walked unsteadily, each trembling step far too slow and difficult. It would take their small group little time to move beyond his ability to follow. The whole idea had been dreams and fancies, to be swallowed by these chambers of old, abandoned apparatus and the dirty canvas shrouds that covered them. He was alone.

And with that thought, he was suddenly, overwhelmingly tired.

"This is stupid, Julian," he cursed himself. "Stupid!" He swayed a little, as though the floor were no more substantial than a deck of rotting timber-boards. Holding to a section of wall, that protruded outward to no more than the width of his fingers, he winced at the sharply throbbing pain in his head. And tasted metallic salt upon his lips.

Bringing one hand up towards its source, he studied the fresh scarlet stain that had soaked into the hem of his sleeve. _Nosebleeds, now_? Perhaps he should not have been so surprised. His blood was thin, with a weak, liquid sheen, and even the floor was spinning dizzily around him, with a fresh ache forming at the base of his eyes. If there was anyone to find in the next rooms along, he would have to find them soon.

A sound in the distance was almost too quiet to be heard - until it gradually caught, and held, his attention. A series of clicks like hard surfaces tapping lightly against one another. Could it be possible? Was someone else still working here? It was almost too much to hope for.

A door was slightly ajar, where it had deviated enough from its tracks for the base to have jammed in tight. Even Bashir's thin frame was unable to squeeze through the open gap without the edges scraping against his skin. "Hello? Is somebody there?" His voice was hoarse and tentative. The noises stopped.

A landscape of grey-black shapes had been stacked together to span the length and width of the room's interior. Bashir ran a hand along a row of bulky neuro-electric monitors - although only the corners remained entirely visible, and the inch and a half of uncovered screen was scratched and grimy. His fingertips came away stained with the flaky grey-brown of dust.

A small but sudden gasp issued forth from this scene of long neglect. Two oversized dark eyes peered from between two covered shapes, but concealed themselves immediately as soon as they made contact with the momentarily bewildered Human.

"Don't be scared…" Bashir called, as clearly as his voice allowed him. "I just need to ask you something." Slowly, hesitantly, and with one hand gripping the covers like a barricade, the same wary figure revealed himself again.

The room's other occupant was notably smaller than Naron, or any others of the city's population - at least, as Bashir remembered them. _A child_, he realised. And more than likely, one of the only other creatures that he would see in these deserted halls. Four faintly darker lines ran along his bare, domed scalp and extended all the way to the top of his nose. The natural yellow-brown of his skin shifted quickly to an underlay of desert ochre.

A grey plastic toy clattered loudly to the floor. The boy startled, frozen as though by the stare of a Gorgon - and with a quick, almost subvocal yelp, he darted for the exit.

_Wait_. Bashir grappled for the nearest stable support - the mirrored edge of a privacy curtain, which had been drawn two thirds of the way around one of the empty beds. If only there was a way to detach this metal post from its frame, to use it to support him like a staff. He couldn't let the retreating child disappear, as Jack and Sarina and the rest of their party had done.

The youngster had already dodged all the way to the door, slowing only for just enough time to thread himself through the still-marginal gap. "Hey!" gasped Julian, hoarse and breathless, fighting not to stumble against any walls or apparatus as he struggled to follow the Adigeon boy, his own steps jagged and uneven. "Stop. Please. I… I won't…"

His head ached as though squeezed between two grinding blocks of stone. A fog of colourless, rippling textures obscured what remained of his failing vision. He swayed on his feet, and bent low, clutching the broken doors and breathing hard. His other hand held fast to his own belly.

"Wait…"

The young Adigeon halted, glancing over his shoulder. But the fingers of his left hand were already hooked around the sharpened edge of the next intersection. His small, thin body was tense and watchful, preparing to disappear around it.

With one thought coming through the clouds in his head, Bashir levered himself away from the wall. _Don't go_. He could not allow this child to get away. He could sense his own weak, feathery pulse. His legs resisted at every step, as though held back by the traction of thickly congealing, knee-high mud. The floor continued to shift beneath him as he surrendered briefly to the meagre support of the corridor. breathing with such exertion that every breath was painful in his lungs. Even the deepest of these brought little oxygen to his head and extremities.

And just as suddenly, the ground was rushing closer, faster than he could ever right himself. With a hard enough collision to knock the breath from him, Bashir felt the shock of impact surge into his shoulder. There were no voices, no hasty pounding of distant feet against the linoleum. Nothing but the quiet, slow silence of an otherwise abandoned hall. But… Still standing - by some miracle, he was still standing. It was the wall, not the floor, that had taken much of his weight.

Sick and dizzy, he fell to a helpless crouch and crossed both arms - like a bat folding its wings - across his chest. Their touch did nothing to lessen the painful cold. Eyes heavy, barely open, he surrendered to the power of gravity, slid still further as the indoor scenery began to drift away.

_No regrets_, Julian told himself. _You tried your best_.

He closed his eyes.


	22. Tides of Fortune

It had not been the group's most difficult operation, but certainly, it counted among their most complicated. The visitor stayed close to his place near the wall, where a narrow depression sank inward by only centimetres, but it was enough to give some concealment to each sporadic glance he was casting to either side. The marks behind this open panel were as unfamiliar to him as quantum dynamics to a troop of roaming Pakleds. But no-one had ventured near enough to question his presence, and he did not have to understand this foreign circuitry in order to pretend.

As he stood with his back to the central - and so far, empty - thoroughfare, what had been a mesmerising pulse of colours across the circuit board was abruptly disturbed by a second, slightly aberrant rhythm that blinked dull red at the top left corner. The flashes of light snatched the man's attention, and he stared, knowing that his focus had turned immediately sharp. Even the drumming of his heart had intensified, so that his view of the panel flickered marginally with every surge of blood through the capillaries of his eyes.

Exactly as predicted… This was precisely what they'd been expecting all along.

With agitated hands, he clicked the panel shut and barely remembered to shuffle all his tools back into their proper order. The open container was left abandoned at one side of the floor, brushed aside like a pile of litter by a fluent sweep of one foot, moments before he strode away. Certainly, he had never been an engineer. He did not even know what two out of three of these objects were called, and had even less idea of what they were supposed to do.

Before long, the secretly concealed transceiver was once more only millimetres from his mouth - near enough that his fingers felt the tickle of displaced air. He spoke into the tiny device. "We're in business."

The silence lasted only seconds. But even this was challenging the man's already extended patience. Then, a sharp, startled voice spoke deep inside his ear. "Eh? Already? Then that's gotta mean that they're all inside - right?"

_Idiots_.

"That's what I said, isn't it?" the first man hissed. Impatience flooded his voice with a hefty measure of contempt. "= But that's not the _point_, Riley. Now get yerselves over here. Time to take up our second positions."

* * *

The child leaned close, each movement smooth and fluid, and studied Bashir with eyes as dark as deep, black wells - from as many angles as he could see. Both hands reached forward - long, slender digits grasping and lifting the Human's right arm up by the wrist. He manipulated it, turning it palm-upwards, and then back again to drop at Bashir's side. Finally, he squatted back on his haunches, and - with his head tilted to one side - he stared at the alien stranger's sickly face.

Julian's hand moved, a brief, involuntary spasm of his fingers. But the child scampered backwards until he was once again out of reach. A small, pink tongue flicked quickly from his half-open mouth as from a safe distance, he continued to study the man before him.

Eyes open as far as he could force them to go, Bashir fought hard to return the youngster's scrutinising gaze. "Hello…" he croaked.

The young Adigeon tensed again, glancing furtively back along the corridor.

"No. Wait." Bashir's words were hoarse and slow. But the undertone of urgency behind his voice seemed to have regained the boy's attention. He lifted one leaden hand towards his chest. "I've been looking for somebody. Another Human. Like me. Perhaps you might have seen… She used to work here."

"The lady doctor?"

"Yes!" For the first time since discovering that the hospital had been so long deserted, Bashir allowed himself to hope. Gasping, dizzy - almost manic, he let his head drop back to rest against the wall behind him. "Yes - exactly. Do you know…?"

"I was not supposed to tell." The child continued to study him, quietly hesitant. His large eyes blinked. "Are you ill?"

Bashir was surprised to discover that he was still reluctant to confess to the Adigeon boy. But he nodded delicately, his head throbbing. "Yes."

"Doctor can help?" The boy's soft query was diminished even further - as though perceived through a haze. He rose to his feet. But then he paused for long enough to glance over his shoulder. "I'll find her."

* * *

"This is going to hurt," said a voice.

It was true. The pain was stealthy, rising from the seed of a vague, distant ache, until it was deep enough to slice along the length of every nerve. His mouth opened, but every attempt to cry out against it was turned to fitful, shuddering gasps. He became aware of a steady pressure across his chest and arms. Physical restraints, he realised. Both hands tensed into two hard claws. Somebody had tied him down.

_Oh, God. Stop_!

Even with eyes opened barely to the breadth of a single hair, he sensed the hovering lights above him. Shadows moved, but only as distinct as on a cool, moonless night. Soft at the edges like thinning smoke. His vision returning, he tracked the outline of a drifting face - and groaned. "Cold," he managed to gasp. "I'm cold." His head was fuzzy, heavy - ears ringing and barely able to take in the sounds from outside.

"I know." The voice was a little clearer, low, and female. Definitely female… "Try to relax. It isn't harmful."

As the artificial glow faded quietly to nothing, he closed his eyes with delicate caution and swallowed back a taste of rising acid. _Strange_, he realised as his memories finally drifted back from their deep concealment. Of all the things they revealed to him, he did not recall having come into this room. A light shone into each of his eyes - slender and white, with a steady, too-bright glow. And the woman's voice continued to speak. She could not give him anything for the pain. Not yet, but perhaps when her initial round of treatments had settled and strengthened… _Just be patient. Not long now_…

But finally, perhaps, he could wonder to whom the voice belonged.

Seeking the speaker's face through half-open eyes, he saw dark hair gathered into a bun, and flecked in places with threads of light grey. "Lucky you came to me when you did," said the same woman's voice. "You're not as far gone as you might have been. And that's some good news, at least. Not unsalvageable. It may take at some time - at least a day, I'd wager - but you'll be back on your feet before very long."

She looked down into Julian's watching eyes. Her face was still unfocused, but it was steadily clearer even as the ache of his treatment grew dull and distant. "Even _more _lucky for you, I still remember what we did with a lot of your medical records. One day, maybe two, and that will be time for you to leave."


	23. The Lady Doctor

Another boy had accompanied his parents into the hospital's well-lit interior. Another Human - not the exotic locals who passed through the doors with the passing of every successive day. This other child was barely the height of Julian's shoulders, but with thick, determined legs that negotiated every clumsy step as though to crush a row of mountains. He had wandered to the centre of the waiting room, away from the adjacent chairs, where his parents looked on in mutual silence.

A single yellow-brown curl draped over the centre of the other boy's forehead. His face was paper white, but both cheeks were red like two bright apples. Wide, pale eyes made contact with Julian's, and continued to watch with quiet curiosity.

Julian's hand held tightly to his father's, fingers barely spanning the width of Richard's larger, rougher palm. But he slowed, hesitated, held back his progress to stare at the pale new arrival until Richard found that he too was following his son's determined gaze.

"It's not so bad," he told the other boy, who stood where he was with fidgeting hands. "You'll get used to it eventually."

"Jules. This way." The orderly's voice was summoning them into a long, straight passage, as though Richard and his son had not traced this same path many times before. Richard guided his son along the corridor, with a gentle tug in the right direction, not glancing again at the younger child's large blue eyes. But he could feel the boy's stare as it followed them all the way, until he and Julian were finally out of sight.

Whatever unspoken query was forming behind his son's quiet frown, Julian glanced back only twice, and the words in his head remained as silent as they had been when they first arose.

* * *

A restless sleep. Surrounded on every side by a darkened, lonely chamber - and again by the constantly multicoloured pulse of biomonitors. Lights in his eyes were kept him from sleep, but neither could he fully awaken. Day, or night - there was no sign of either beyond the walls.

And who could say where his fellow escapees had found themselves - now that they were free to follow whatever whim should take them? If anyone had seen them, nobody had told him so. A string of increasingly unlikely theories crept into his imagination, dissolving just as instantly with neither comment nor response.

Breathing heavily, he remained as still as his body would allow, and waited for the steady, unwavering ache to recede. What else could he do, unable to move without feeling nauseated, or even to keep his hold on the passage of time? He was far too tired, too sick, and abused. Far too detached from any sense of himself to care about what might be happening in the world beyond this isolated room.

At one point, a hand rested against his forehead, its cool pressure retreating with no accompanying voice - only the memory of a tricorder melody sounding repeatedly in his ears until that, too, slipped away. Waking only briefly, he discovered that he was alone again, and missed the comfort of another's presence at his side. How much time had passed? He could not say.

He was hollow without the pain of further treatments - without those sensations by which he might define himself. What had he been doing here? He struggled to recall, memories remaining barely half-formed. But then, did it really matter?

He allowed himself to sleep, again.

* * *

Bashir's head turned heavily - eyes opening part-way. Fuzzy, indistinct colours sharpened only gradually - but enough to reveal a small brown face barely peeking over the level of the bed. The Adigeon child peered over one edge of the mattress - thin, slender digits splayed like the ridges on a scallop across a portion of its upper surface.

He responded with a small, drowsy smile. "Hello again."

The child tensed as if to flee.

"Wait." Bashir struggled to support himself on his elbows, every breath deep and heavy as his muscles trembled from the effort. "It's all right. Don't go. I just… I was wanting to thank you, for what you did before." He fell back, but kept his eyes on those of his small observer.

"I'm Julian," he offered quietly - before slipping back into deliberate silence.

"Q'etu." The young Adigeon straightened to stand a little taller, but never took his huge, watchful eyes away from Bashir.

"You are strange," he noted. "Like Hilary. But not the same."

"That's true," replied Julian, unsure of what else he ought to say. He had never thought to imagine the formidable doctor of his childhood as simply _Hilary_. "We're not quite the same."

"Are you an alien too?" the boy inquired.

Bashir stopped to consider his answer. "Yes - I suppose I am."

Watching with subdued curiosity, Q'etu blinked several times before he spoke again. "I wasn't to come past these doors," he said finally. "The others said to stay away. You won't tell them I was here, will you?"

_Lucky for me_, thought Bashir. He knew of no other children who had never been tempted into places where they were not supposed to go, and good fortune was better to remain unquestioned - lest it shatter and break apart, never to be seen again.

His eyes were closing, only intermittently able to resist the pull of half-sleep, as another wave of nausea slithered up towards his throat. "It's all right." He forced a smile. "I'm glad you're here."

"But _I'm _not," said an unexpected voice. "Q'etu. I warned you of what would happen if I saw you in here again."

The boy jerked suddenly, frozen in place like a hologram on pause. Two semi-transparent membranes flapped twice over the surface of his eyes, and he let forth a series of rapid, uneven clicks. Bashir remembered this sound as clearly as if he had spent several years on this world instead of the weeks that it had taken him to respond to the genetic fabrications of his childhood. The local nurses had produced something distinctly similar as a reaction to sudden, immediate fright.

The rhythm of approaching footsteps was rapid but not harried - so distinctively female that Julian felt no surprise to see who was striding into his field of vision. The dark eyed child sped away with quick, light steps, soundless as he accelerated into the concealment of the passages beyond.

_Doctor Larkin_. She was older, smaller than she had once appeared to Julian's more childish eyes. Dark lines marred the skin beneath her eyes. Her face had aged, cheeks pinched and hollow, and the hair he remembered as chestnut brown had turned to grey, now threaded with thin silver lines.

"Lift your hands for me," she instructed without ceremony or greeting, and demonstrated by raising her own to the level of her chest, palms open and directed towards the floor.

Sighing, Bashir obeyed.

The woman had still not faced him directly, and he could not ask the questions that had crowded his mind. She gave no outward sign of whether his response was satisfactory, but nodded to herself. One hand held a scanner from the pocket of her coat. A small frown of concentration had settled on her brow as she looked down at the hidden display.

"BP is up by another twenty three percent," she muttered. "Cellular integrity… holding steady. Pulse is strengthening, and the accumulation of toxins in your blood seems to have slowed, for now at least. Good… Understand me, this is not a cure, and whatever has happened here may still eventually kill you. But it will very likely take years, not days."

Bashir turned his hands as he lowered them, glancing at the lines upon his palms. _But that _was _a _little _easier_, he thought. _I suppose_._ So, what happens now_?

The middle aged doctor drew her gaze away from the tiny monitor. "I've managed to stabilise your condition for now. I'd say we're making good progress. It might take another day before you're ready to leave, and there's a very good chance that your problems will return. But given continued vigilance, I'm sure you can find a way to slow the rate of cellular breakdown. Are you well enough to speak?"

"I think so." Bashir's voice came hoarsely, and scratched like thorns against the inside of his throat. But, possibly with painkillers to form an effective barrier against all but the most indistinct discomfort, his body felt more tired than sore.

"Good." The doctor sat beside him and looked hard into his eyes. "Because there are certain things we need to discuss, foremost among them being, what were you doing back at my clinic?"


	24. Justifications

_Isn't it obvious_? Bashir stared, eyes revealing the sudden incredulity that had briefly deprived him of his ability to answer. He winced.

"I gave you some painkillers just after your last treatment," Larkin maintained a careful contact with his eyes, although the words she spoke sounded moderately brusque. "If I'm not mistaken, they should be wearing off by now."

Speech remained difficult, but Julian sensed a need for his voice to strengthen - which would have to come with practice. "Then it worked."

"It worked," confirmed Hilary Larkin. "There was nothing I could do to stop the cellular breakdown, and I can't guarantee that the effects will ever completely heal. They may still return as you get older. But doubtless you'll learn to manage it, with time."

And _with enhanced adaptive capabilities and accelerated sub-cellular rejuvenation. Assuming of course that I can find the strength_. _Never underestimate the value of a father's gifts_. Gifts that he never should have received - a life that had never been his to claim. Why else would the Federation have gone to so much trouble, to take it all away?

"What's this, then? One more 'advantage' of being engineered?"

"Do you still think that everything you've accomplished is nothing more than the result of genetic manipulation?"

"Isn't it? I would never have needed to come here if…"

"But you came," insisted Larkin.

"There weren't a lot of other options." This woman had been the one to restore Bashir to life. Surely, she must have known how close to failure he had come. His recent memory, even the extensive series of medical scans had given him no cause to doubt his own assessment. He was not at the best angle to be permitted a clear perspective, but he could see well enough to know - the display at his side was maintaining a constant watch on his neural activity. Unsurprising, as he could also feel the thin, metallic pressure of a synaptic monitor across his brow, and he was certain that the continued weakness and the ache in his head were not concealed from sight.

"I couldn't find any existing medical records from my early childhood. You _know _that, Doctor. Whatever there might be could just as easily have been faked, there wasn't even evidence of deleted files. And Jack was right - or so everyone seems to think. Thanks to you I'm one of them."

"Jack?"

Bashir struggled to keep his thoughts in focus, including his recollection of the ones who had originally abducted him. "I was travelling with others," he explained hesitantly. Then it was done. Whatever the outcome, this woman had been told about his little group of fugitives. "They helped me get this far. But we…"

_We were separated_. His head ached as though with a clamp behind each eye. _Don't know where they are, Doctor. So don't ask. I don't even know how long ago they left_.

But Larkin's face showed no surprise. "I see…" she muttered, and glanced around her. Whatever she expected to see gave no sign of materialising from the walls of the narrow, cluttered room.

"I understand why you couldn't locate any records," the middle aged woman continued, one hand tapping against the surface of her tricorder. "I was never in the habit of keeping any more than minimal notes. Not entirely scientific in the strictest sense, but that did make it easier for me to disappear - when I needed to."

"I…" It was difficult to argue with her assessment. "I was told that you were staying out of sight."

Larkin studied him for a long moment, saying nothing, but had begun to tap her tricorder instead against her opposite palm. She frowned to herself, briefly contemplating - but not seeming to notice - the gradual movement of her hands as they closed around the portable scanner.

"Don't," she told him finally in a low tense voice. "You really shouldn't ask me this."

Sensing the conflict of divergent impulses rising to the surface of her tired blue eyes, Bashir watched her even more closely. "Why?"

"Believe me," came the doctor's response. "It isn't something you want to get yourself involved in. There are some things that are simply… _safer_, not to know."

A jolt of shock stabbed directly into Bashir's stomach. _We're a little beyond that, don't you think_? But only one protest found escape. "I doubt it's anything you can protect me from."

"Then perhaps you _should _be told," Larkin conceded. "The fact is, I've been persona non grata in the Federation for quite some time now. Until three years ago. I was offered - or, at least, I was _told _I would be offered - a chance at redemption. There's little in this story that you wouldn't have been able to guess before too long. And these secrets… They don't deserve to be kept."

"What do you mean?"

Larkin looked up. "They called it simple research," she told him quietly. "Protection from a mortal enemy, and if I helped them, I would be allowed to return without the fear of any penalty. But I suppose you already know about Starfleet's experiments into developing biotechnology?"

…_To use against the Dominion_. Bashir could almost have completed her sentence himself. It was a powerful enemy. And yes, he _had _heard.

"You…?" He frowned, the next breath catching momentarily in his throat, but with no surprise, he realised quickly. He'd been wondering when this story might come again to the fore. "You were involved in all of that? Why?"

"I'm an expert in genetic engineering," Larkin explained. "And the Jem'Hadar are genetically engineered. I've seen your research too, Julian. I know you're as aware of that detail as any other person in this quadrant."

_Well, yes. But_… He didn't care what they had done, nor about any of what had happened before now. They had not been at war when this project had commenced, nor even when it had reached its conclusion. And if he had known that his studies of the Jem'Hadar would be used in such a manner… Larkin was a doctor, after all.

Her head turned slightly, blue eyes seeming to have caught something in Bashir's reaction.

"You think that I shouldn't have agreed, perhaps," she deduced. "Perhaps I should have told them no, from the moment that Starfleet Intelligence hinted that they might have regained some interest in me. Believe me, this all started as a legitimate research assignment - at least as far as I was ever told. I had no idea what I was really getting into. By the time any of us realised any differently, it was far too late to back away. I hadn't worked in the Federation for, it must have been… Yes. _Decades_. But Starfleet can be very persuasive. They offered me a chance to return, and Earth is still my home."

"Now _that _stinks of a cop-out, and I think you know it."

"The Federation hasn't earned any loyalty from me." There was an even harsher edge to Larkin's rebuttal. "And from what I've heard they haven't done a lot to help you either. Where else would you have gone, if not for this facility? I've seen children taken to back alleys and basement clinics because their parents had nowhere else to go. And why? The Federation decided since the _Eugenics _Wars that they were wrong to want the best possible start. It was hundreds of years ago, Julian, and I never forced this procedure on anybody."

_That's not the way I remember it_.

"Then what you're saying is, you think the laws are wrong?" Bashir challenged her. "And by extension, that makes you right?"

Larkin's gaze was level as she met his challenge with her cool, only slightly fading blue eyes. "Closing us down would not have made the slightest difference to the number of Human parents wanting to make this decision. And my own mistake was absurdly simple. I expressed opinions that didn't _fit _in the warm and happy Federation paradise. I tried to provide a better option than would have been permitted in their utopia. And for that, well…"

She snickered quietly. "Out of sight, out of mind. Which brings up another question. How did you know to look for me here?"

Silence grew more conspicuous with every second that passed. Julian remembered the face of the man who had watched him in the night. The distant, analytical gaze, the cool but dangerous congeniality in his voice. Studying him closely, Larkin nodded as though to confirm some inner belief.

"Then they _are _still looking for me," she muttered. "Who was it? Lawrence Appleton?"

"He was killed," Bashir whispered automatically. He shuddered, head still throbbing, and with the heat of blood already rushing to his face. He had not been a witness to the man's final moments, but he was no less certain that there was truth in his words.

Larkin's own gaze sharpened as she regarded him pensively, muscles tightening noticeably around her eyes.

"_Sloan_."

Denial was pointless. Every corporeal impulse urged Julian to allow his eyes to close - not to open them for several hours, at least. But the same sharp voice still cut through his waking thoughts.

"Did he mention me by name?"

"I… I think so." He cursed himself for the vague, unsatisfactory response. But there had been a mounting intensity in the woman's interrogation, enough to give him reason to hesitate. "Yes. But I don't see…"

"Then I'll ask you this," said Doctor Larkin, her voice now a full tone lower. "Have you given any thought to _why _this man might have contacted you? Has he given you reason to believe that he would tell you all of this, just to help?"

"Well, he must have…" Bashir stopped, frowning hard. _No_, he realised. And he _had _asked those very same questions, a hundred times or more. But they had never quite succeeded in rising beyond the edge of his consciousness. He watched Larkin through half-focused eyes. "You think someone did this to me. Possibly even… _Deliberately_?"

"Consider the facts," Larkin prompted. "What do they tell you?"

Bashir frowned at her, his thoughts still a little sluggish. He thought back to the words that had first led him on this course. "They knew," he whispered, realising suddenly. "It was never about accidental contamination. They knew I would have no choice _but _to look for you."

"What else did you expect?" said a new and unidentified voice, itself emerging coldly from the shadows.


	25. Under Siege

"You…" said Bashir before he could stop himself. "You're Human."

It was the most immediate trait that he had noticed in this other man - and that which came as the greatest surprise. Cold eyes watched both the room's occupants, from beneath a pair of thin but dark and overhanging brows. He did not know how many others might have come to this planet, but every non-Adigeon he had encountered until that moment had been a native of the same far-distant world.

"Ten points for deduction," the intruder snarled with deep-throated sarcasm. He swept a hand in a broad arc around the landscape of mechanical devices - some active, but most of them hidden like corpses in stasis. "Guess all _this _hasn't come to naught then. Has it?"

He lifted a long, semi-cylindrical rifle - balancing it a little awkwardly in the crook of his right elbow. A matte-silver casing was wrapped around the outside, divided by a single groove extending along the bottom edge of its muzzle.

"Now get moving." He jerked the energy rifle fractionally sideways to indicate Bashir. The sneer never departed from his sickly, sour-cream face, "Him too."

Positioning herself between the intruder and her patient, Larkin folded both arms with protective determination. "I'm not about to go anywhere with you, and neither is he."

"Did I say you had a choice?" The response came as a fierce, low growl.

"That's not the issue here," Larkin continued stubbornly, her own persistence an easy match for this hostile newcomer's. "This man is not ready to move, and neither of us are leaving this room until I say that he is."

With a contemptuous twist to one corner of his upper lip, the stranger raised the tip of his rifle to the level of Hilary Larkin's head.

"Wait-" Bashir struggled onto his side and felt his stomach contents surge in time to the sudden momentum. He forced himself to sit partially upright, but even his own throat clenched against an emerging attempt to speak. "Don't. It's… It's fine. I'll come."

Legs threatening to give way as he came into contact with the dusty floor, he grunted, and held to the upper surface of the mattress with as much strength as he could gather in his hands and forearms.

"_Well_?" The stranger's voice was an immediate, sudden fire-burst - the aftershock throbbing and sharp as a knife in Julian's head.

"Give me a moment!" he insisted, breathless.

"He has extensive neuromuscular degeneration," Larkin informed the other man. "Trust me. He won't get as far as the end of this room - not without physical support."

"No," gasped Bashir through clenched teeth. "I can. All I need is… get my balance. That's all. It's…"

He stumbled.

"You know that's not true," Larkin reminded him. "Don't even try to tell me that you're 'fine'."

The tall man stood, watching as even the other's arguments evaporated to nothing. Then he turned sharply towards the older doctor, and gestured with the disruptor rifle in his hands. "Then you. Help him."

* * *

"Faster!" The rifle was jammed into the small of Julian's back, forcing him forward until he had almost overbalanced. A sharp, bruising pain burst upward from the bottom of his spine, accompanied by the stranger's cold demand. "I haven't got all day."

The smaller man continued to shadow both prisoners, keeping less than a metre between them. But Julian's steps were heavy, each breath shallow and painful. He kept one arm around his belly and the other across the width of Doctor Larkin's shoulders, allowing them to serve as a thin but sturdy support. His focus remained on the position of the stubborn but only sporadically visible intruder. A footstep, a touch of breath against his neck, or even the occasional pressure of a disrupter muzzle against his skin. All were clues, to pinpoint the man's location as he remained beyond the range of Julian's visual field.

"This is as fast as you can force us to go," insisted Larkin.

"Shut up," came the half-shouted imperative from behind their backs.

"Listen," she tried again. "There's nothing in here that you could possibly…"

"I said, shut up."

Another snaking corridor led to an end point at the very back of the hospital complex. It was not as far as Bashir had assumed. But he found, with his legs still reluctant, that the sensation in his extremities was now as strangely distant to him as if they had been disconnected from his torso. _But it's not the same_, he reminded himself, as Doctor Larkin's shoulders tensed to take a greater portion of his weight. _You're out of any immediate _medical _danger. The doctor promised_…

_And what, doctors never lie_? The exertion of movement had triggered another bout of trembling.

The farthest end of the passage was marked by a door with a surface the colour of Martian rust. Darker veins of dirt had gathered in the diagonal scuffs across its centre, which had certainly been more pristine in his early childhood memories. The markings beside an orange door indicated entrances to narrower, secret places, where only the hospital staff had ever been allowed to enter.

"Open it." The stranger aimed the tip of his rifle directly at Hilary Larkin, so close that it for a moment it seemed to scrape against the fabric of her outer coat. The doctor's skin flushed with the pressure of holding back another angry retort. Her jaw clenched tightly. But she reached up with her free hand, hesitated for only a moment, concentrating - with a small, thoughtful frown - and keyed in the eight digit access code. _How long since she's had to remember those numbers_? wondered Bashir, as the familiar security scanner now swept across the contours of her skin.

He slapped his own hands reflexively against the handlebar of a grounded antigravity sled, which failed to prevent the metal from colliding with his belly. Stepping forward, the stranger had given the door no time to slide fully open before shoving both hostages roughly through the marginal gap.

Held upright only by the tension in his arms, Bashir found himself looking in dumbfounded consternation at a trio of other hostages. Every one was a fellow escapee, those who had accompanied him from the distant and nearly forgotten confines of the Institute. And no-one responded with any surprise to Bashir and Larkin's sudden entry.

Only one face was missing. Sarina.

"Down there." The leader manhandled both recent prisoners to separate places on the edge of the cluttered floor. He deposited Hilary Larkin in the storeroom's farthest corner, and forced Bashir to the wall. He fell, and gripped one arm with his eyes tight and teeth grinding hard against each other. The eldest of his enhanced companions, snowy hair drifting around the edges of his crown, had distorted his face into the beginning of yet another bout of fretful sobs. Julian doubted that the others nearby had failed to notice, but they paid him very little visible heed.

"Oh," Jack remarked. "You got here after all."

There was more than a dash of sarcasm in the wordless stare from Julian's tired hazel eyes. He sighed, head falling back against the wall. "You, as well?" he muttered under his breath.

"Oh we're not prisoners," responded Jack, chuckling conspiratorially. He dropped his own voice to a whisper. "You see? You see? It's all a part of our master plan."

Bashir's voice was heavy with more than simple fatigue. "Master plan."

"Easy," Jack persisted. "We pretend to have been captured, and then we find out exactly who they are, what they want, and where they're coming from."

"And after _that_?" Bashir challenged.

Jack's dark eyes flashed, one hand lifted to his mouth, and finally he turned away with an acute, impulsive scowl. "Fine. Won't tell you then, if you're just going to _criticise_."

"We were looking for you." Lauren filled in the rest of the tale. "We thought you might have been back here, but there was only one way to be certain. Instead, we found them."

_And what were you up to in the meantime_? wondered Julian.

Lauren's focus shifted to Larkin, whose own blue eyes were watching the small group with increasing scrutiny. "Your doctor friend?"

A slight sideways glance from Julian was all the confirmation she needed.

"Then that must mean it's over between us." Lauren sounded briefly wistful. But her voice hardened at the sight of Bashir's irritable gaze. "Don't get your hopes up, Julian - it was never that good."

The pain was even more acute across Julian's chest and shoulders, and every attempt to form a coherent response was causing his head to pound. He sighed.

Seeing only three faces at his side, he wondered again what had happened to Sarina. The question expanded like oxidised flame, but caught in his throat - remaining unasked. Somehow, he thought, it was better not to alert the others to these thoughts, or draw attention to the younger woman's absence.

Their captors were agitated, moving about with short, restless strides. _There are three of them_, Bashir noted secretly. One - a larger man than either of the others present - tapped irritably on the surface of his rifle. But he leant back, glancing periodically over his shoulder and with his face set into a constant, concentrated scowl.

"The one on the left," hissed Jack, sensing the genesis of another question. He nodded to a small, hunched man who had been casting repeated unhappy glances at his two larger companions. "His name is Riley."

"He believes in their cause," Lauren supplied, "But he's a lot less certain about their methods."

Jack nodded emphatically. "Yes. Yes. Exactly," he said, pointing at the tall brunette for added emphasis. He redirected his attention to the same sickly individual who had brought him to this tiny room. "The one in the middle there - that's their leader. Wouldn't try convincing _him _of anything…"

"I gathered as much," Bashir responded in a clear but only semi-audible whisper. He glanced at the final unidentified stranger. "What about him?"

The soft, childish laugh at his ear came as a moderate surprise - and turned to see that Patrick's expression had opened to a grin. The old man was looking directly at Lauren, chuckling to himself in spite of the tension in their captors' watchful eyes. But there was a pronounced hunch to the third armed stranger's shoulders, unnoticed until that moment, a now-clear deliberateness in his scowl. Almost as though he was trying not to look their way.

_She's gotten to someone, then_. Bashir spared a momentary glance at Lauren's calmly fashioned smile. And felt the sudden, explosive pain of a disruptor-butt forced hard into his upper body.

"You!" snarled the leader, glaring ferociously enough to silence all protests. "Get over there. You, other side. And shut up, the lot of you. You may have _calculated _what a disruptor blast feels like at point-blank range. But trust me, that's not the same as _knowing_ it."

_I know already_, thought Bashir. But for that moment, their best chance would have to be in silent patience.


	26. The Messenger Child

"You're looking better," the leader had taunted them just minutes earlier, reflected light shifting over the oil on his face as he twisted it into a mocking sneer. "Must have taken a lot of doing, to get yourselves this far. Shame it's not about to do you any _good_."

Bashir scowled darkly. "You still haven't told us what you want in here." He half-gasped through a whispered reminder, prompting a reaction. The pale man cocked his head to one side.

"Thought you'd know."

He shifted away to position himself on the sill of an opaque, painted window, cradling the energy rifle in two cold, yellow-white hands. Veins and tendons bulged along both forearms with the tension in his watchful pose.

_They're angry about something_, thought Bashir, watching the taller, more muscular giant as he too lumbered past. _Or… Not angry. Resentful - of me. Of _us…

He turned away from the silent concern on Larkin's face, etched like cuneiform into the creases of her brow. It was an effort to convince himself that he did not need any attention from Hilary Larkin. He was not at all certain of whether he might have restrained himself in her position. Given ideal circumstances, before the first signs of illness had made themselves known, he had usually been able to maintain his blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory functions at a steady, medium level. But he _was _growing stronger. He already felt a fraction of gradual control returning to his hands.

He had not failed to notice the far more ominous glare that came from Jack's dark eyes, as the three newcomers stepped away, their scrutiny turned to distant, hawkish scowls. But might he have also seen the small man Riley glance briefly at his two companions - possibly even open his mouth with the beginnings of an unforthcoming protest? Julian cast him a pointed look, a surreptitious plea for silence.

There had been something else at the very edge of his vision. Two dark orbs were moving forward, from beneath the silhouette of a nearby cabinet, and resolved into a pair of wide and pensive eyes. The outline behind them was revealed as a small, thin child now crouched in the hidden shadows, shifting as though in response to the movement of others in the room beyond.

"Q'etu?" whispered Bashir, keeping deliberate contact with the Adigeon child's large eyes. _Don__'__t run. Whatever you do, don__'__t run_… With a quick, nervous glance at the three intruders, he offered the child a fleeting, clandestine smile.

Quietly, secretly, he raised a single finger to his lips. Q'etu withdrew a little, returning to his previous near-invisibility.

"You knew what we were getting into." Harsh whispers caught his attention before he had turned away again. The leader seized Riley by his upper arm, so hard that the smaller man flinched. The leader shoved his smaller subordinate away with a single movement of one large hand. "You promised to make yourself useful in this operation. Can you do it, or not?"

"Course I can. But…"

"Don't make me question my choice to bring you here, Brian."

"I…" Riley cast a trapped, despairing glance at the cluttered room around him. His jaw clenched. "Yeah."

"Right then." The other man turned his back on Riley, and pointed his rifle at the five seated hostages. "Watch them. And as for you lot, if you're really so smart, you'll stay exactly where you are."

Larkin's anxious eyes now held a question, but there was little need to give it a voice.

Bashir kept his response as close as he dared to the fringes of audibility. He indicated the shadows with a tiny movement of his eyes. "Q'etu's in there."

The lines on the doctor's face shifted automatically, shaping themselves to reflect her quiet exasperation. "Q'etu." Her tone accused as much as confirmed the presence of the Adigeon boy.

Q'etu moved sheepishly, closer to the light but not enough to make himself easily seen. "I _did _leave, Hilary Doctor," he persisted. "Just as you told me."

"Wait." Glancing sidelong, Bashir hoped fervently that he could silence his companions before they caught the attention of their guards. He winced with each effort at motion, but slid a little closer to the young Adigeon's place of concealment. "No - stay there."

And if the boy had indeed returned, without being seen or activating any of the security protocols… Could that mean…? Possibly…? Might there be some other way to follow him through the internal arteries of this tall, almost abandoned building? He had hidden in similar places, occasionally for several days. It had surprised the much younger Doctor Julian Bashir, how completely a Jeffries' tube could conceal a small party of stubborn fugitives.

"Listen, Q'etu. Did you say you came here from outside?"

Q'etu blinked once. "Yes," he responded. "The other one. Who helped me get here. She sent me to you."

Even Larkin frowned, shifting marginally closer. "What other one?"

"Like them," the boy insisted, pointing to Bashir. "And you. But she was quiet, and…" He paused, blinked slowly, and finally reached up to indicate the markings on his own dark, hairless scalp. "Orange, on her head."

Bashir held back a laugh at the sudden release of tension from his muscles. "Sarina."

"The tunnel is too small for her," Q'etu confirmed.

Then it's almost certainly too small for us. Bashir took a moment to conceal his disappointment. But he noticed Patrick watching him, the old man's eyes encouraging a further question. He turned back to the hidden child. "Could you get back out the same way?"

"Yes."

"Good." Bashir injected a degree of soft but deliberate urgency into his response. "Then listen carefully. I want you to get out of here. Fast as you can. Tell the lady who helped you that you need to find a man called _Naron _- understand? He's a… a Security officer. That's all you need to do, is get a message to him."

The young Adigeon did not reply, but shifted back into the shadows. Bashir twisted away from the youngster's hiding place, just as his captors were ready to complete another circular patrol. There had been no need to confirm their new-formed understanding.

* * *

Q'etu squirmed head first through a restrictive gap at the very end of the narrow vent. The chamber he entered was far more open - less heavily guarded by scanners and security barriers than any other exit that he knew. He clicked his tongue at the shock of cool air, which until that moment had been blocked by a smooth, dark wall. His people were accustomed to a warmer, more equatorial environment than could be found inside the old hospital's ventilation and temperature control conduits. But his stomach churned with the quiet, semi-illicit thrill.

He was a little hunched, sandwiched on each side by cold, semi-reflective and tarnished metal, and confined by a ceiling that had not quite reached the height of his head. A layer of oily residue had transferred to Q'etu's skin and the fabric of his outer garments, and still more was added as he left the narrow crawl-spaces behind.

The final exit beckoned from around the curve of the outer wall. Cool, insulated metal pressed close against his chest, but Q'etu was increasingly hunched as he sidestepped determinedly through the passage. But he would not be stuck within the wall. He had come this way many times before now.

A long-defunct security seal made the access panel difficult to locate, and brought an ache to the tips of his long fingers with every attempt to prise it open. Adigeon hands were flexible and dextrous, although not especially strong. But his large eyes were perfect for this dimmer environment, light-sensitive pigment on their outer membranes fading to transparency with the scarce illumination.

The hatch was barely higher than waist-level, but its removal brought an instant flood of natural light and a dull pain to his eyes - in the second before they darkened to compensate. Peering through the gap, and noting that his way was clear, he crawled head first through the last remaining barrier, and tumbled clumsily onto the spiralling outer ramp.

A shuttle sped through an upper-level thoroughfare, high above his head, but the streets below were as deserted as midday. Q'etu surveyed the cityscape, holding his breath. At times he had wondered if this quarter of the capital had always been so quiet. Would his luck desert him? But no others were passing on the ground-level roads, nor watching him from outside the neighbouring towers.

The pale Earth woman came into view as soon as Q'etu straightened to his full height and turned to see her approach. "I must find Naron," he told her, hesitating. He had been entrusted with an important missive - a responsibility easily equal to that of an adult.

The Human paused as she passed him in a slow journey down the spiral ramp - and turned, dark eyes never quite focused on the Adigeon boy - but somehow with her attention fixed upon him. Telepathy was not a natural ability in her species - Q'etu was certain. Humans could not even change their colours or produce the low sounds that his own people used to communicate their changing moods. But as he kept his focus on the still-silent woman, he was sure that she meant him to follow.


	27. Outside Influence

_You can do it, Q'etu. Just get through_.

The boy was young. But he already had the necessary skill to slip through the security systems undetected. He was too much like others that Bashir had known - thin, supple creatures with rubbery limbs that could fit through even the most unyielding tunnels.

He rested his aching head against the wall, as it continued to throb with a strong, heavy pulse. He had not noticed earlier, but the silence around him had extended past the point where anybody wished to broach it. Even the surrounding computers were notably dead. With a keen eye on the room's other occupants, he pictured the boy Q'etu, crawling through the labyrinth of hidden vents.

_He'll make it_.

"Hey." Riley was gazing at a panel just above the level of his eyes, where a red light was flashing on the dark grey surface, rhythmic and repetitive. He inclined his head. "What's that?"

The other two men converged on his position until they both had a direct view of the newly animated display. A frown of perplexity had tightened around the leader's mouth and sweat-lined brow. He pursed his lips and took a single step towards the centre of the room.

"You." His sharp eyed glare was aimed at Larkin. "You know what's happening there?"

The middle aged doctor lifted her chin in a moment of silent defiance, but from the other side of the room came the sound of an old man chuckling.

"Don't you recognise a hail when you see one?" Jack's challenge was loud and brazen. Beside him, Patrick had responded with an open grin.

Muscles tense upon his forearms, the other man raised his disruptor. "Here," interrupted Riley before the leader could carry out his threat. He reached up to touch a panel directly above the level of his head.

"Hello inside?" said a voice. "Do you hear me now?"

"What do we tell them?" whispered Riley. His leader cast him a withering glare.

_Hostage negotiation_, Bashir told himself, turning his head to one side as though Naron and the imagined Security force were visible through the thick walls of the hospital. _Here we go_.

"I am Naron," the disembodied voice continued. "I wish to speak to the one who leads you. Which of you can act as a representative?"

Their other two captors were waiting in silence. With only the briefest of hesitations, the leader released a frustrated growl through his teeth. "Yeah," he grumbled. "What do you want?"

The same voice persisted over the comm. "It would help if I had something to call you."

"Fine," the leader shouted to the microphones hidden above him. "Then you can _call _me Cadmus,"

"Cadmus," Naron acknowledged. "Is that your name?"

"It is as far as you're concerned."

"Very well, then," he continued. "I have a proposal for you, Cadmus. A chance to bring this to a close before it escalates, with little risk to yourself, or to any of your men. Now why don't we take a moment, and see if we can't achieve a reasonable solution to this situation?"

"I'm happy with our _situation _just the way it is," snarled Cadmus.

Naron's answer was much calmer. "Even with my people only just beyond the outer door?"

"But not inside," the pale man retorted. "Which tells me you aren't finding it so easy to storm this place. I bet you already know we got hostages in with us. Try anything and they'll be the first to die."

He slapped the panel and extinguished the pulse of its small red indicator. A heavy scowl creased the skin around his eyes as he targeted his prisoners with a sharply probing gaze.

"By the way," he muttered, stroking the bottom of his mouth with one thumb-tip. "Where's that friend of yours?"

With the energy rifle raised above the level of his hip, he stepped towards Jack and Lauren. Finally, like a horizontal sweep of a targeting sensor, his focus had moved to include them all. "This isn't any kind of co-incidence, and you people don't just lose track of each other. You _do _know which friend I mean, don't you? The blonde one. Where is she?"

Five silent faces looked up at him, all tight-jawed, all of them defiant. "Do you expect us to know the answer?" said Lauren - the challenge from the base of her throat as calm and dangerous as that of a stalking lioness. But Julian cast his thoughts to the scene beyond, imagining that he could sense Naron's presence through the walls of the abandoned clinic, and possibly even extend a part of himself to reach the Security team he was sure would already be positioned outside. He wondered, feeling peculiarly restless, how many there might be.

"What should we do?" asked Riley.

"I want to see who this _Naron _is." Cadmus stepped back, and surveyed the seated prisoners. "And exactly what he knows."

But Riley shook his head. "You can't get into any biographical files from here." Faced with a fearsome glare from his leader, he pointed to the exit. "Only from the central database. It's over where the lobby used to be."

"Right then," growled Cadmus, and indicated his bulky partner. "You're with me. I'm gonna need a hand to get into the central systems. And you-" He returned his attention to the smaller man. "Watch them."

* * *

Soft, nagging sounds, that another Human would not ordinarily have noticed, grew even more apparent after Riley's companions had left him behind. Punctuated by silence, every moment only highlighted the soft whine of feedback from a worn-out circuit, and the agitated tapping of Riley's fingernails upon the outer casing of his disruptor. The small man stared obsessively at the communication board, fingers twitching as if this might give him a remote connection to the flickering controls.

Hilary Larkin was quiet, but her constant watchfulness had not abated. Julian wondered briefly how much he could really tell her in a single glance. There was little, he thought, that Jack and the others would not already know.

Cadmus hated his prisoners. That much had been clear from the beginning, as clear as the gleam of fury in his small, dark eyes. _But he doesn't want us harmed_, Bashir reasoned through the same throbbing ache in his head. _He still has some purpose for us. Otherwise he would have killed us all and moved on long ago_.

Riley's incessantly rapping fingers made little sound, but what there was intruded quickly upon the course of Bashir's own thoughts. His attention latched onto the staccato rhythm, dividing it into the dots and dashes of an old-style communiqué. But the random bursts of Morse code emerging from Riley's fingertips never seemed to arrange themselves into anything like a recognisable word.

"Will you stop making so much _noise_?" shouted Jack, his words explosive and sudden.

Tightening his hold on the disruptor until every one of his knuckles was dappled white, Riley flushed, and glared. "Look-" he grumbled quietly. "He wants me to guard you lot, that's fine with me. And _that _means, you stay quiet. I don't give a damn what you think of the noises I make."

"What a shame," said Lauren. "You seemed so much nicer than either of your friends. Not at all the sort of man to be making _threats_…"

Riley said nothing.

"I think-" she continued. "You would be far better suited to providing technical support. Making arrangements, negotiating. It must be quite rewarding, to be the one who knows how to handle _people_…"

Even Julian discovered that he too was slightly mesmerised by the woman's low, mellifluous tones.

Riley shook himself all over, as though pulled from a trance. "I'm not supposed to be talking to you."

"Not supposed to?" The words rang clear in Julian's memory. Larkin watched every one of his movements as, deliberate and tentative, he leaned forward and ignored the shifting ache at the centre of his head. A sudden involuntary tension had come to Riley's shoulders, and with only the faintest dark stubble to define or obscure the lower half of his face, the tension in his jaw was clearly visible.

His quietly haunted gaze was transferred gradually to the weapon in his hands. For a moment, he stared, as if the sight of it was foreign to him. But Bashir's attention was entirely fixed upon the troubled face in front of him. The downcast eyes of their guard revealed an undercurrent of turmoil, and doubt.

_Can we use that_?

"It's not you I have a problem with," Riley admitted quietly, still frowning. He nodded at Larkin. "It's what _she _did. What _you _all represent. We… We can't allow it."

"We?"

Bashir changed his position again. The effort was tiring. But he could sense the pieces of a mystery coming together. He did not want to let them go - not this time. The answer threatened to slip away, even as he finally thought he could speak aloud.

"You're one of the Anti-gens."

_Of course_. In the back of his mind, he had always suspected. He had seen others like these men before, and knew them. If not individually, then certainly by type. The simmering hatred, barely concealed behind their collective gaze. He noted the subtle changes in Riley's eyes - as well as the new question forming in Larkin's and Jack's.

"What are they?" Hilary Larkin was first to ask.

"Humans." Bashir kept a steady watch on the other man's reaction. "You are Human, aren't you? They think they're protecting the good of humanity. But at some point, they decided that we don't _fit _that definition."

"Exactly."

Riley jerked backwards, looking pale, as his leader approached from around a covered diagnostic bench. The tacit giant was close behind him. "But then I knew that you would work it out eventually."


	28. The Intruders' Judgement

Cadmus' yellowish face glistened with a paper-thin coating of sweat. "Your people tried to have me killed," Bashir reminded him. "Is that what you want to do today?"

With the briefest, barest grunt of response, the trio's leader kept his gaze aimed firmly at Riley. "And what was your plan?" he demanded of his prisoner. "To turn my men against me? I'm not as dimwitted as you think I am, right? Else why would I have left you lot alone in here? I knew you would try something. Whatever scheme you're got going in your heads, it's not gonna happen. Is it, Brian?"

Riley shook his head. "Don't think so…" he responded, but punctuated his answer with a sharp, anxious cough, and stepped away to concentrate on the coloured lights of the communication panel. "No. Course not, Cadmus."

"Good." His leader watched him for a moment longer. "Now that's sorted, we can get down to business."

"What business do you mean?" asked Lauren innocently.

Cadmus turned on her. "Don't play games," he insisted. "You know exactly what I'm talking about. Who the Hell is Naron?"

"Why don't you _ask _him?" retorted Jack. "Find out for yourself, if you're really that interested."

"Uh-" Riley ventured, his voice belatedly gaining strength. "That mightn't be such a bad idea. They obviously want to talk to _us_…"

"What they _want_-" growled Cadmus. "Is to find some weakness to exploit. Or are you really so dense that you can't see what's going on? They want to get inside, and the more we say to them, the more we give away."

Bashir massaged his forehead with the ball of one hand, to relieve the increased pressure burrowing deep into his skull. The constant background whine had not stopped in almost two hours, and now he realised it had also changed in pitch. Although no louder, it had risen by almost two full tones - forcing his attention to shift back towards it. He glanced to one side, and saw that Patrick was rubbing one ear, although fretfully watching Cadmus - and that Jack and Lauren were tense and alert.

But he also saw Lauren's eyes connect with those of her companions, just long enough to silence them both. _Good idea_, he thought. Larkin and their captors had given no response at all to the silent, secretive exchange. None seemed to have noticed the subtle difference in background noise. _That's probably just feedback in one of the power relays. Need's adjusting - that's all._

_On the other hand_…_ Don't say a word._

"Naron's a Security officer." Bashir spoke quickly, before Riley's thought processes could reach their ultimate conclusion. But his voice was hoarse to his own ears, weary and frustrated. "We met him after we arrived on this world. I have no idea how he managed to find his way here or what he does or doesn't know about you and your men. Now finally, _are _you satisfied?"

"Hardly."

"And what if I said I might once have agreed with you?" suggested Bashir. "What if we were _all _to believe every word that came out of your mouth? Would that really change anything?"

The response from Cadmus was immediately vicious. "You're supposed to be smart. Guess."

"I already have," Julian muttered tiredly. It was all clear to him, ever since the very beginning. Nothing he could have told these men would ever be more than empty words. Whatever understanding they might have reached, they had lost that opportunity in decades past. When their elders made the decision to alter their small, awkward children.

From metres away came the sound of a quick, intrusive snort. "What's there to agree with?" Jack's voice was sharp and contemptuous. "Why would we want to be like _Cadmus _there? He hasn't said anything too convincing so far. Has he?"

Patrick shook his head. "No, Jack - he hasn't."

"Fine," shouted Cadmus. "Think what you like. And you're right. Makes no difference. You'd tell me anything to get yourselves out of here. Everyone says the same stupid things. So many opportunities in the Federation. Nothing's impossible, as long as you work hard for it. But what good's that ever gonna do, when cheats like you take all the good spots for yourselves? Twist things into any shape you like, else how would you all have gotten off so easy all your lives?"

"What would you know about our lives?" Frustration twisted still more strongly in Julian's chest, bordering on anger - rising and retreating, but still alive inside him. Still burning like the touch of a small irrepressible flame. But his voice was soft and weary.

"I know that you should have been in locked that prison right alongside your _father_. All of you got off far too easy."

"Then you would hold a six year old child accountable for the actions of his parents? That attitude would be more fitting for the _Klingon _Empire than it is in the Federation. Or do you think that we _asked _to be pulled apart and changed like we were?"

"You broke the law."

"We didn't have a _choice_."

"Oh. Really?" Cadmus snarled. His yellow face was flushed and mottled. "And what about _my _father? We struggled just as much as any of you lot ever did, him and me. He made choices too. I studied hard at school, often through the night. But _we_ never cheated. I _earned _my right to success, without any of those shortcuts taken by the likes of you. I heard everything you were telling each other - with that little _chat _along the corridor over there. And I don't buy that woman's excuses any more than you did. So don't even try to tell me that you never had any choice."

"Whose excuses should we believe, then?" Jack challenged with a mirthless laugh. "_Yours_?"

His dark eyes were quick to lock with those of his captors. "Don't know what to do, hm? Not so dangerous now. Everything was just fine until now. Wasn't it? But you don't know where to go from here. Maybe you think we could give you some _lessons_. I'm right, aren't I? You came here for _something_. So why not be done with it?"

_Shut up, Jack_.

Cadmus returned his challenging glare. "All right," he resolved. "I will."

He passed his own rifle to his larger companion, who kept it tucked into the crook of his right elbow. And just as quickly, he had swooped down to grab Doctor Larkin by her arm, forcing her to stand. "Up!"

"What are you doing?" she gasped, but stumbled as he dragged her roughly across the room. Cadmus accelerated as the doctor's leg collided with one corner of a sharp, protruding block of metal.

"Look hard, Doctor." One hand grabbed Larkin with an unyielding grip around her jaw, fingers pressing tight enough to make shallow indents in her skin. Cadmus jerked her face around so that her wide blue eyes were staring directly at Bashir. His voice had turned to a rasping, offended hiss. "See? _This _is what you have created."

His other hand had wrapped around something barely seen, which glinted as it caught the light.

Julian knew what it was before he was consciously aware, and he was leaning forward, his horrified gaze fixed directly upon this half-hidden, gleaming metal. _No_, he thought. His chest had clenched - almost too tight to draw a breath.

Cadmus sneered, and pulled Hilary Larkin closer by the fabric of her clothes. His face was close enough for the middle aged woman to flinch away. With a low snarl, he slammed the blade into the side of the doctor's abdomen.

"Face judgement."


	29. Another Distant Signal

Bashir jerked forward, muscles automatically tense as a pair of rough hands pushed him back against the storeroom wall. Every fleck of pigment was distinctly visible in the eyes of Cadmus' large companion as he pinned Bashir with a warning stare.

He spoke with a low, rasping voice - growling wetly as though his throat had never quite accustomed itself to the production of audible words.

"Not you."

Hilary Larkin slumped into the corner like a puppet whose strings had been cut. She clutched one side of her belly with her face twisted in a moment of sharp agony. Inky stains of reddish purple already marked her lips and the lids of her eyes. From somewhere behind the heavy thug, Riley drew a sharp inward breath as though preparing to speak. To protest? Julian wondered. But the momentary expression of disbelief on his face had vanished as quickly as it arose.

"What have you done?" Bashir accused.

Cadmus regarded him with a calculating scowl. His response was soft, but dangerously clear. "What? You want to be next?"

"Julian," What little Doctor Larkin could gather of her voice now came out as a barely audible wheeze. "Please. Don't try to be a hero."

She winced, and fell back against the wall with rapid, shuddering breaths. "You're only here because of me," Bashir insisted. Less than a day ago, his life had been the one so precariously balanced. "At least allow me to…"

But Hilary Larkin shook her head. "No… Not this time, Julian. It's not up to us…."

Larkin was a doctor. She would have known as well as he what the loss of so much blood would mean. She was quiet and still, her skin had already turned bone-pale, and with the same hand pressed against the broken flesh just above her hip. Secretly, Bashir was impressed by the woman's stamina.

_But she won't be able to keep that up for much longer_, he thought - anxiety pressing on his stomach like the metal clamps of a vice. _Most others in her position would have lost consciousness by now_.

There was no sign of a reaction in Lauren's large blue eyes as she watched the scene with quiet attention. But Jack glanced repeatedly at the whining circuit board. His face betrayed an occasional sly and covert smile, the muscles of his neck twitching in what may have been a voiceless chuckle.

_There's nothing to laugh about_. Julian scowled, longing to give voice to the flash of hot anger in his eyes. Patrick was whimpering softly to himself, but his sub-vocal keening only seemed to have amused Jack even more.

_Why couldn't he have just shut up_? cursed Julian in silence, but with an additional admonition. _Why couldn't I_?

The same steady mechanical whine had intensified as if in mounting anticipation. "Er…" Riley shifted back a step until he was once more staring at the communications panel. "Cadmus?"

"_What_?" the other man snapped.

His companion pointed to the blinking light upon the console. "That Security officer," he explained, a little reticently. "The one from before. I think he wants to talk to us again."

"Is there no way of shutting that stupid thing _off_?" Cadmus snapped.

"I don't think so," said Riley. But he held his next breath as both hands worked the controls, and glanced anxiously at Doctor Larkin as soon as he was done.

"Cadmus?" Naron's remote voice interrupted whatever response was forthcoming. "Night will come soon. Are you prepared to engage in further discourse?"

"_Further discourse_?" Cadmus mocked. But the first speaker was unperturbed.

"Might I at least be assured that your prisoners are well? It has been some time since last we spoke."

"I _can _assure you that they're not," retorted Cadmus.

A long, apprehensive silence followed his reply, but the eventual response was hopeful, if anxious. "If that is so, can we not provide assistance? Send out your wounded. You have my word that we will do nothing to harm either your or your men."

"What do you take me for?" was the Human's immediate reaction. "No-one's going anywhere until we've done what we came here to do."

"Then is there nothing we can offer in exchange?" continued Naron.

"You're decades too late for anything like that!" his contact sneered. "Don't you get it? We're here to undo some of the damage your people caused."

Severing the communication with a single-fingered stab, he glared at his four remaining hostages. "I guess he still thinks we're after Latinum or something," he sneered. "We'll have to show him different, then. All of you, on your feet."

"Wait," insisted Riley. "If he's ready enough to work something out with us, perhaps we _should_…"

The leader turned on him. "Our contact expects a certain outcome from us, Brian. You knew that from the moment you signed up for this. What did you think was going to happen?"

He pointed the muzzle of his gun directly at Patrick. "Get up."

One by one, all except for Doctor Larkin rose slowly to their feet. Julian glanced towards her, and was strangely relieved to see her wince with another laborious breath.

"Turn around," growled Cadmus, sweeping his rifle horizontally across the assembled group. "Faces against the wall."

_If you do that, he'll execute us all_. Bashir saw the intent in his captors' eyes. It would happen as certainly as they had attempted to do to Larkin. _Not this time_.

From now, if anyone was to claim control over his life - it would be him.

"No," he insisted, with as much cold ferocity as had ever accompanied his voice. "If we're going to die anyway, then it will happen on _our _terms. Not yours."

He stepped away from the edge of the room, and met their leader's answering glare with steady defiance. "And, _damn _you, look me in the eye."

Cadmus' eyes were just as cold. "When are you going to learn?" he responded with little hint that any feeling remained behind his words. "You people don't _have _the advantage any more. Not on Earth. Not in this quadrant, and _certainly _not in this room."

But something else caught Bashir's attention as he glanced momentarily over one shoulder. True obstinacy was not to be found in Riley's backward steps, nor in the glint of light that flashed momentarily over his eyes. But the other man's breathing was far too controlled, too deliberate and slow. Almost as…

Julian's eyes narrowed.

…_As if he's anticipating something_.

And now Bashir knew with utter certainty that he, too, had been holding his breath. A sharp pain in his inner ears was sure indication that the mechanical sound had continued in its mounting intensity.

"I'm still waiting, Brian," warned Cadmus in a low voice. Confronted with only a silent, defiant stare, he shoved the other man aside. "Out of the way, then. I'll do it myself."

A sudden flare of light shot upward from the console, sending Cadmus back in a heavy free-fall. His cry of pain was drowned by the plasma surge, but the sound of bones cracking apart could have been mistaken for little else.

Red, glistening flesh had instantly risen to angry blisters over the entire left side of Riley's face. His eyes were open, head askew at an angle that confirmed him as instantly dead. Cadmus' eyelids were reddened, swollen, and closed to slits. Each breath was slow and heavy, with a laboured, bubbling sound coming through his throat. Internal bleeding - and very likely with several severely ruptured organs behind his chest and stomach.

Ears ringing, his vision only gradually returning to his eyes, Julian staggered as he propped himself tenuously against the wall. He heard groans, someone coughing - and responded with a sharp automatic cough of his own. _What happened_? The shade of memories rose slowly, struggling through the confusion of his mind. There had been a change in the constant buzzing tone. A hint of colour beneath the panel - something exposed…

_Sabotage_.

But whatever the cause, he realised, Cadmus would not survive for very much longer. There was nothing to be done.


	30. Pieces of the Whole

A tall feminine shape passed unperturbed through the rising smoke, as it turned to thin twisted ribbons and parted around her. Lauren was smiling as she stepped past Julian and knelt before the last of the three Anti-gens. The dark, broad shouldered and almost silent man had fallen to the floor, where he stirred restlessly, coughing away the smoke and shock. Lauren displayed no sign of anxiety or even concern, but cast a fleeting glance at the disruptor rifle on the ground beside the big man's feet.

"Hello," she whispered. Bending forward, she enfolded the survivor in a tight embrace, and allowed her painted lips to connect with his. Her right hand rose steadily as though to stroke the man's round cheek, seemingly oblivious to Jack and Patrick's expressions of profound incredulity. But she stopped at the last second and shifted back until she was once more gazing into the man's half-closed eyes.

There was danger in her movements as she studied every contour of his dark and strangely bewildered face. Something cunning behind her large blue eyes. She held an object concealed within the folds of her perfectly manicured free left hand. _How long has she had that for_? Julian asked himself in a moment of puzzlement, less than a second before he heard the familiar breath of a hypospray.

Quietly, Lauren sat back to study her victim, whose head had slumped like a weight to one side. His right hand was half curled, palm upwards, on the floor. "Poor man," she noted with dispassionate curiosity. "He really believed that I was interested."

* * *

_It's not so bad_, was Cadmus' final conscious thought. He had felt some pain after the initial plasma shock - a moment when he felt the sparks cut deep into his body. But this had faded, along with the glow of overhead lights in his eyes. His vision had taken little time to leave him - but even as it did, he was no longer struggling to see.

There had been a reason for all of this. It had been important. Somehow…

"_You got study to do."_

_It was his father's voice, the old man struggling over to a splintered wooden chair and easing himself gradually down to sit upon it. The creases on his hard, brown face were as deep as though etched into a mask of hardening clay. Cadmus fancied that he saw that old man, still in the room and hunched in the chair by the South-East window, with the same stark divide between the light on his back and arms and the shadows that blocked all but the barest outline of his face._

"_We're just as good as anyone else." The words rose from his distant memory, but with near-perfect clarity as though his father had never even died. "You study hard. Don't you fall behind - right, boy? You'll regret if you fall behind. You'll regret it the rest of your life."_

"_No, Father," the boy assured him. "I won't fall behind. I promise."_

* * *

"Naron?" Bashir ignored the tight, sickly discomfort at the centre of his belly. "If you can hear me…?"

He wasn't even sure if the channel was open - or whether the console was of any more use than a slab of painted wood. His voice had a thick, heavy quality to it, and he staggered awkwardly to position himself on the floor beside Hilary Larkin.

"It's over."

Carefully, he pulled away the fabric of Larkin's jacket, and looked around him for something to clean the excess blood from a deep puncture wound. Stop it from escaping, and prevent infection - those were his priorities. Even now it was slick, and bright crimson, continuing to flow until it had almost hidden the break in her skin.

"It doesn't hurt," said a croaking, barely audible voice at his side. Larkin's head moved slowly - seeking the source of the noises around her. But her eyes remained closed. "Is someone there?"

"It's me," responded Bashir. "Julian. Remember? You were injured. But we're all safe now. Try not to move around too much."

"Julian…" said Larkin, smiling faintly. "I do remember… You were one of the children."

For a moment, she was quiet - vexingly quiet - but then she stirred a little and forced her eyes to open.

Her lips moved again, barely shaping words. "Thank you."

"I'm just returning a favour," Bashir replied hastily, but faltered when he saw the smile disappear on Larkin's face. Tentative and sluggish, her head was shaking.

"Not what I meant…" Her reply was slow, but forceful. "Thank you - you reminded me…"

Bashir frowned. "I don't understand."

"You reminded me-" Larkin struggled to explain. "…Who I was. I couldn't stay hidden after you had come. Not knowing what would happen if I did. I might not have made the best decisions in my life, but I'm still a doctor."

* * *

Others came quickly, hustling Bashir away from the dead and wounded, before he even had a chance to wonder how they had known they were needed. "We will take it from here," said one, who retreated quickly, dismissing his immediate offer of assistance.

"There is no need," the Adigeon medic responded. "We are transporting them to one of our best hospitals, at the border of the Western quarter. They will be well looked after once we reach that place."

Struggling to locate the direction in which Julian now stood, Larkin grimaced through a final attempt at a reassuring smile. Her departure in a swirling array of light and colour left an irregular reddish brown stain upon the floor.

* * *

The Adigeon sun was low in the sky, reacting with the thick atmosphere to produce a celestial display of scarlet and gold. "A Federation vessel is coming this way," Naron advised his tall companion, who stood beside him at the edge of the tower's outer ramp. "They will arrive within the hour. I have explained the situation, and I do not believe that you will be held accountable."

"I see." What did _that _mean, _not accountable_? Bashir turned to glance at the building behind him.

"I was pleased to see that one Human at least was able to leave before Cadmus' arrival," the Security man continued, and raised a placatory hand. "She and the boy are quite safe. They remain in my office, for now. And for you and your friends, your survival was fortunate."

"Believe me," responded Bashir. "That hasn't escaped my notice."

But the other man paused to watch his changing expression. "It troubles you?" he guessed eventually.

"Not that-" Bashir told him. "It's just… I keep asking myself if I made the right choice back there. I did my best to help Larkin. But at the end of the day, I might still have done more for Cadmus and the others."

"The doctor was wounded," Naron reminded him. "Cadmus' men were either dead or dying. You could have done nothing to alter those circumstances."

_Is that it_? Julian wondered. Or was it something deeper, far less noble than he liked to admit? He kept his focus on the outer rail. "This place," he muttered. "It's dangerous."

Was that even the right word? He found himself frowning at a row of dense sulphur-yellow clouds, which was only now drifting behind the thick, cylindrical wall. But then he shook his head and rubbed away the tension in his brow. In the end, it made little difference what words he chose to employ.

"Maybe they didn't turn us all into freaks and monsters." A bitter taste was encroaching on the back of his mouth. "But if it weren't for places like this, then groups like the Purity Front would never have had a need to 'protect' the natural evolution of our species. Or… I don't know. Who's to say they haven't been right all along?"

"No," responded Naron. "Think what you will about the decisions of your parents, or of the ones who worked in the clinic behind us. Or even the Purity Front. But their solution was to turn against our most basic laws. Others might speak out against the history of Adigeon Prime - and that is not an issue for us. But once they become a genuine threat, even in a part of our city that has scarcely been occupied for years, then there actions can never be justified."

He paused. "And what of Doctor Larkin?"

Blinking rapidly, Julian struggled for a moment to gather his recollections. "They took her to the Western quarter…"

"Are you sure?" said Naron, his skin flushing a cold ice-blue. "The _Western _quarter?"

Bashir hesitated, again with a troubled glance behind him. "That's where the medics told me she would be."

Naron shook his head. "There are no hospitals in that sector of the capital."

"What?" Bashir span towards him with an immediately startled frown. "Wait - are you _certain _of that?"

"This city is my home." Naron's steady voice left no room for contradiction. His words sent a shock through Julian's blood. "These buildings are as familiar to me as the sight of my own arms and feet. And I can promise you there has never been a hospital in the Western quarter."

_Somebody told him that we would come to this place. Somebody wanted Naron to be involved. And Cadmus, and the Anti-gens_…

With a horrified gasp, Bashir sprinted downhill along the twisted thoroughfare. But he slowed to a stop after only twelve steps, with both hands splayed over the dome of his scalp. _Where are you going_? he demanded of himself. The silent city mocked him from every direction. To kidnap the doctor, to take her away without him even realising that anything was wrong, and… Who could possibly have arranged such a…?

"Sloan!" he shouted, and punched the side of the nearest wall. Immediately he wanted to swallow the name, to snatch it from the air as though it had never been spoken aloud. But he ignored a powerful shock that surged along his fist. The tears in his eyes had little to do with physical pain.

"I'm not your delivery boy, _damn _you!" he shouted to the obstinate edifices of the capital. He bent over, hands clenched around the metal rail as if to squeeze the life from its very molecules.

"Calm yourself." Naron had descended the platform considerably more slowly. "You are still weak from the treatments. You will not be able to fight every evil in this universe alone."

"But, Larkin…"

"There is nothing we can do for her."

Julian turned, anger rising inside of him, tears of accusation stinging in his eyes. _How could you _say _that_?

But the protest died on his lips. Whatever Sloan's ideals, the Purity Front had always been a threat. But at the same time, an opportunity. He could only assume that the same was true of Doctor Larkin. Bashir cursed himself - why could he not have realised earlier? But now, he thought, he himself was a part of the other man's schemes. If he was going to regain control over his own fate - if he too was going to resist as others had done - he would have to be careful.

_Very careful_.

He made no effort to stop the sting of moisture from touching his eyes. If anything, it brought him some relief from the raw dehydration that continued to chaff across their surface. But he forced back the tide of emotion - there would be time enough to make effective use of the anger inside him - and turned once more to face the tall Adigeon man.

"Just one more thing."

"What is that?" asked Naron.

Bashir paused to gather his thoughts. "You gave us access to the old hospital," he finally said. "You knew the codes. You had all the right information committed to memory. More than you revealed to us, I'd be willing to wager. Which means that you must have been able to bypass the security protocols. You could have stormed this building at any time. So why didn't you?"

"I told you that my position was _like_ that of a Civic Security Officer." Naron turned towards him, taking on the faintest hue of milky orange. _Amusement_? Bashir guessed. It was the closest estimate he could find to match their situation. He wondered if there was not the faintest semblance of a smile on the Adigeon's otherwise impassive face, as he began his retreat.

"I did not say that it was the same."


	31. Imperfect Absolution

"Are you ready?" Richard waited patiently by the exit, as his son hoisted a moss-green bag over one shoulder and paused for a final nervous glance behind him.

He had kept it packed for several days, hopeful for the moment when Doctor Larkin's tests would finally indicate that his stay could end. He had sat very still through every procedure, and listened to all he could glean from the nurses' hushed exchanges. His wide hazel eyes had followed their activities with a potent intensity, tracked the blinking lights of Larkin's scanners, and stared as if he too could see the answers spread across each hidden screen.

Julian nodded in response, but Richard could not help but share the six year old's tense anticipation. They would see Amsha again, not to mention Earth. The possibility of a reunion with his wife was reason enough to cause his heart to pound.

"What will our new place be like?" Julian had inquired on the previous day, but Richard could only respond that he did not know for sure.

The boy had promised in a soft, contemplative whisper, never to reveal that he had ever been to the Adigeon system. "Do you understand why?" Doctor Larkin asked from her position by the exit. Standing in the empty ward, with the bed stripped down to its mattress as thought it had never been slept in at all, he chewed momentarily on his bottom lip, and gazed at a point just in front of himself.

Julian looked up. "I…" Even on this single word, he stumbled. But finally, reluctantly, he returned his attention to the doctor's eyes. "Something to do with Father?"

"That's right, Jules," said Doctor Larkin.

Richard felt his son's scrutiny as, for a seeming eternity, the boy targeted his father with a long, conflicted stare. His eyes seemed even larger than was usual on his small, dark face, sparkling brightly in the pale light of the room.

"I won't tell," he swore.

As he made his way towards the arch of the doorway, Julian bounced a short way off the floor until the heavy travel bag was hoisted more securely over his shoulder.

"I can do it," he insisted, dodging away from Richard's attempt at assistance even though the bag and its contents were heavy enough to dwarf his tiny frame. Stopping briefly, he looked up into the Human doctor's clear blue eyes.

"Quickly," she told him, nodding towards the open door. "You wouldn't want to miss your shuttle home."

* * *

Athena Nikos found the man she had been looking for, beneath the shadow of the old hospital, and with a padd clasped loosely in the fingers of one half-open hand. He made no objection to the woman's approach, but Nikos was no less hesitant. She did not doubt that he knew she was there - he must have heard even the quietest footsteps. But he remained unresponsive as she positioned herself at his left hand side and pushed a wisp of stray dark hair from across her eyes. Now was not the time to force a conversation.

Squinting Bashir looked straight ahead. His eyes located a distant horizon between two edifices of the Adigeon city.

"They're gone."

Nikos watched him, and paused a moment before replying. "It's for the best. And what about you?"

"Oh, I'm just splendid." He flexed his empty left hand for good measure. "Completely cured. Never better."

The response from Nikos was a tacit nod - but she was sure that the weight of concern was showing in her eyes. She had heard many things about this planet - about its people, their sophisticated use of genetic manipulation, and about the extensive and oppressive daytime heat. All she had been told was true. Adigeon Prime was significantly warmer than many other inhabitable planets. The air was thick and heavy, and added to the effect of higher gravity on everything around her. Including her mood.

"Naron told me what happened," she prompted, gently.

The corners of Bashir's mouth twitched upward slightly - taking on the shape, although somehow not the true likeness, of an equally heavy smile. Even this vanished just as quickly. "It was Larkin." He spoke in a barely audible monotone, and looked up to find Athena Nikos' grey-green eyes. "Did you know that the Purity Front would be coming after her?"

As earnestly as she could manage, the green-eyed doctor shook her head. "No."

But Bashir was frowning, watching her closely. "And everything I did was precisely what they wanted… You see? I had to _escape_, for the plan to work. I had to believe that no-one knew I'd come. The Purity Front could never have reached Doctor Larkin if my coming to Adigeon had been sanctioned by Starfleet. It had to be a secret, to leave her _unguarded_, and…"

A long, wordless glance passed between them, extending to the moment when, finally, he looked away again.

"The ones behind all of this could never have allowed you to come with me." His subsequent words were close to silence, barely distinguished by a string of half-whispered consonants which Nikos strained to hear. "They'd planned it all from the very beginning."

"They?"

Frowning, the young man shook his head. "Don't," he told her. "I know how it sounds - but just… Please don't."

As Nikos watched, Julian raked his fingers through his hair. He lifted the padd in his hand, directing her attention towards it. "A letter," he explained. "It was in one of those old rooms. I wrote it to my mother the first time I was here."

Nikos' shoulders carried her forward until she had moved just a little closer, careful not to allow her presence to intrude.

Turning to examine the older woman's face, and finding only a frown of close attention, Bashir forced a small, dry cough.

"I'm tired of this." He spoke more to a transitory breeze than to his still attentive audience. "Even if… To give up. To stay where I was and wait for the inevitable - that was never an option. But if I'd known here was a chance that anybody else might have been hurt because of me… I _never _would have… If only it were possible to take it all back. Even just thinking about it, I can't help but feel so…"

He stared at the padd in a moment of tangible silence, and finally closed his eyes. "…Tired."

* * *

He could have opened his eyes again. He could have lifted his head to look upon the sunbaked city - the metallic reflections which seconds ago had pierced his vision. But he sat for several seconds, moving very little. To have come to this planet, placing Larkin and the others in such danger… It was such a clear violation of all that he had ever valued.

"What will you do now?" Athena's voice was subdued, guiding his thoughts to a distant conclusion.

Bashir leaned forward, tangled strands of dark brown hair now threaded between his fingers, and held back a weary sigh.

Somehow, his lips, his breath - his mind - would have to find a way to speak again.

"I don't know."

His hands were stiff, still difficult to move, and he wondered if they would ever fully regain their lost dexterity. And the thoughts in his head were as far from expression as when Miles O'Brien had inadvertently triggered the Bajoran aphasia virus on Deep Space Nine. Not entirely inappropriate, he supposed. Perhaps he should accept this permanent reminder; perhaps he didn't deserve to forget what he had done.

_Oh, shut up_. He scowled at himself, and fought to quell these egocentric musings. Things happened in the universe - good, _and _bad - and not all were happening because of _him_.

"Something I was wondering-" But then he coughed, his throat still dry. "The others had nothing to gain by bringing me here. So, why…?"

"I expect they just wanted another chance to thumb their noses at the Institute," said Athena with a quietly knowing smile. "It won't be the last time."

Bashir discovered that he was nodding slowly. Not quite in agreement… But understanding. "Lucky me," he muttered. A touch of irony clouded his response.

_But whatever the reason, I owe them my life_.

He was shaking a little, spine curled forward and aching dully at its base. He felt tears gather in his eyes, catching between his lashes before they fell, and wondered if he could be starting to cry. But then he heard a sporadic unexpected sound. He realised that the voice was his own, and noted with some distant astonishment-

He was laughing.

Nikos continued to watch as the young man looked up towards her. A lopsided, melancholy smile spread gradually over his face when he saw her frown of anxious perplexity. "I'll tell you something else," he added. "With all that's been happening in the Federation, there might even be a place for the likes of me. I'm sure that Starfleet could use all the help it can get. After all, didn't I used to be a doctor?"

His attention shifted to a pair of Security officers who had only now come into view. He sighed.

"Don't worry." It took him a greater effort than usual to haul himself to his feet, but he _was _getting a little stronger. "I won't resist. It's probably time we left this place behind."

* * *

The guards beyond his cell were content on most days to leave Prisoner 0974 Delta to his own devices. He had never given them a reason not to trust him on his own, and had gained a reputation since his arrival at the isolated colony as a congenial and unassuming man. His sentence would end, given time, and as the seasons passed, he was content to spend each day in relative solitude, undisturbed by either prisoners or guards.

Light shone directly through a transparent aluminium pane, filling the tiny space with natural warmth and illumination. But the prisoner inside squinted in mild annoyance as it shone directly into his eyes.

"Nice morning we're having today," the warden had called in the early hours of that day, with Sol already risen but the air still moderately cold. Prisoner 0974 Delta stepped back a little from his patch of garden, scratched his head with his free left hand, and gazed upward at the high, almost too-bright star. "It certainly is."

That had been the extent of their brief exchange, like two neighbours meeting on a sunlit avenue - the only words that anyone had said to him since dawn.

A wistful smile touched the prisoner's lips as he tapped a finger against the hard outer casing of his padd. Without knowing it, he had grown a little hunched in the thin, stiff chair.

He sat at an equally utilitarian desk with his gaze drifting indiscriminately towards the view outside the window. A broad green expanse of cultivated gardens and gently sloping walkways, enclosed within four conjoined blocks, was almost enough to give the inmates an illusion of freedom. A casual observer might not even notice the transport scramblers lining the rooftops, or the inward facing doors all easily lockable from outside. They would not have seen the shields above the complex, or the proximity sensors attached to every possible exit. But they may still have noticed the uniformed guards who regularly patrolled the grounds.

"Jules," he started to dictate, but immediately stopped. Old habits were hard to break. He lifted the padd to glance more directly at the words transcribing themselves across its screen. As the afterimage of sunshine faded from the back of his eyes, he chuckled unhappily. "Sorry. Julian. I've been _trying _to remember. But sometimes it's much too easy to get carried away. Especially with so many things - _important _things this time, I promise - that I really have to say."

He paused, troubled by the momentary uncertainty that clouded the path before him. He had always been a fluent speaker. But his words - like his life - had lacked direction, a sense of purpose, and in particular, the eloquence needed to communicate those things that mattered most.

"And now," he continued. "I don't know how to say them. What if I said that I was sorry? I might have chosen differently if I'd known where this would lead…"

The monologue continued in his head. _Or you might try to explain exactly why you had to make these choices. You could tell him how much you worry about him now. If anything happens… _The old man swallowed hard. _He had to force this thought to its conclusion. If anything happens, there might not _be _any more chances to start again_.

"_Start again_?" He could picture Julian standing in the room beside him. The words of his adult son ran continuously through his head, almost as if the voice had been real, as if he knew precisely what the other man would say.

"_I'm sure you would love for it to be that easy_," came the apparition's imagined response. "_But is that really what you think is best? To erase our past as if it never even happened? I'm sorry - but I just don't think that's possible any more_."

Richard Bashir glanced once again at the small collection of family pictures - all that adorned the surface of his desk. Each held a captured happy moment trapped inside a thin gilded frame. He thought of his son, as anxious as he would have been for a missing six year old boy. _Still no news_? But of course there wasn't. He rarely spoke to his family any more. And most of all, he still missed Amsha.

"No," he muttered, scowling as he tossed the padd back down onto the desk. It slid to a halt beside his family portraits. "Delete that rubbish. Delete it all."


End file.
